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Number 3 Job: Translation
Spring
251
287
1997
Volume 24
The Book
of
and
Commentary
and
'A Soldier
and
Afeard": Macbeth
The
Gospelling
319
339
Todd R. Flanders
of
Scotland
Robinson Crusoe
Rousseau's Adventure
with
Colin D. Pearce
Discussion
363
Harry
V. Jaffa
Book Reviews
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Alex
Harvey Morrisey
by
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Composition by Eastern Composition, Inc., Binghamton, N.Y. 13904 U.S.A. Printed and bound by Wickersham Printing Co., Lancaster, PA 17603 U.S.A.
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E Mail:
Interpretation
<Jrrino Spring
1 QQ7 1997
-m-*-
Vrlnm* 9_
Volume 24
MnmKor Number ^ 3
Robert D. Sacks
Paul A. Cantor
The Book
of
Job: Translation
and
Commentary
and
251
"A Soldier
and
Afeard": Macbeth
The 287
Gospelling
Todd R. Flanders Colin D. Pearce
of
Scotland
with
Rousseau's Adventure
Robinson Crusoe
319
339
Harry
V. Jaffa
363
Alex Will
Harvey Morrisey
by
John Horgan
of Life: Plato's Philebus,
371
377
Copyright 1997
interpretation
ISSN 0020-9635
Interpretation
Editor-in-Chief Executive Editor General Editors
Hilail Gildin, Dept.
of
Leonard
Grey
Seth G. Benardete Charles E. Butterworth Hilail Gildin Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Howard B. White (d. 1974) Christopher Bruell Joseph Cropsey Ernest L. Fortin John Hallowell (d. 1992) Harry V. Jaffa David Lowenthal Muhsin Mahdi Harvey C. Mansfield Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) Michael Oakeshott (d. 1990) Ellis Sandoz Leo Strauss (d. 1973) Kenneth W. Thompson Terence E. Marshall
Heinrich Meier
Consulting
Editors
Wayne Ambler Maurice Auerbach Fred Baumann Michael Blaustein Amy Bonnette Patrick Coby Thomas S. Engeman Edward J. Erler Maureen Feder-Marcus Pamela K. Jensen Ken Masugi Will Morrisey Susan Orr Charles T. Rubin Leslie G. Rubin Susan Shell Bradford P. Wilson Catherine Zuckert
Michael Zuckert
Manuscript Editor
Lucia B. Prochnow
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in
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Theology, Literature,
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put,
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Composition Printed
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E Mail:
The Book
Translation
of
and
Job
Commentary
Robert D. Sacks
St. John's College, Santa Fe
CHAPTER ELEVEN
answered and
man with
multitude of
be
answered?
Must the
the quick
always
be in the
3 Do
lence? Do
you
'My
tenets are
yours should
without
bring
all men to si
would open
His lips
4 You say being 5 Oh, if only God Himself speak to you, 6 tell you the secrets of wisdom: for and you must know that God will bear some of
rebuked?
sight.'
you. of
God,
can you
find them
out?
Would
you
earth
mea
10 If He
by
and
separate5
or close see
up,
who can
11 He knows the
man will
worthless man.
Can he
when
it? 12 Hollow
('adam).
become thoughtful
the
birth to is
a man
your
13 But, if
and
you
direct
heart
firmly
your
hands to Him 14
and
if,
when
there
your will
wickedness
in
hand,
bear
you remove
it,
let
no
injus
tice dwell in
think of
blemish. You
tent, 15 be firm
high
above all
have
no
FEAR. 16 You be
forget
it only
as water that
the noonday
secure
will
because there
will
be hope.
You
will
burrow in
afraid.6
lie
at ease.
19 You
be in
make you
Many
eyes of
the guilty
will
all escape
is lost,
exhale the
spirit."
appeared
of
interpretation,
Spring 1997,
252
Interpretation
Comments 1. Literally, "a man of and clearly intended to be derogatory. 2. The force, and hence the deceptive force, of human speech is its ability to speak of a part, even a random part, as if it were an intelligible whole. Job's
arguments presuppose that there
lips,"
is
it is sufficiently
open
to
human
existence.
surfaces,
The things
within our
ken,
while
they
to hold
together in a
beguiling
sort of
way, may be required to be so modified by what human judgment inadequate to the point of meanseen within a
larger
context
may
no
longer
be
so.
"iniquity,"
3. This word, which has traditionally been translated tends to be used in a rather specific way in the Torah, and it is not impossible that Zophar
has in
mind a and
distinction
"sin."
which the
Torah
makes
between 'awon
while
or
"perver from
sion,"
het
or
Het
means
"to
mark,"
miss the
"pervert."
'awon
comes
twist,"
distort"
or or
right,"
future
growth.
One
refers to an
Consider:
Deu. 5:9
of the
fathers
fourth
upon
generation.
Contrast this
Deu. 24:16
verse with
Fathers
shall not
be
put
children not
be
put to
die
for his
own sin.
From
the
Deuteronomy
of
24:16 it is
be held
responsible
for
a
"sins"
his
or
her
own particular
parent, but
"perversion"
with
it is
different
matter.
a general which
tendency
a
'awon
to refer to
fathers
have
lasting
devastating
effect on the
put
it
in
other
any crime his father may have committed, of us, inherited a debt to the Native American peoples, a debt which we shall never be able to pay in full. There is also another aspect to the question. The more one thinks about the
country,
problem of
insoluble it becomes.
253
have
They
by
innocent
alike.
blame? How to
being terribly
or
optimistic when
an answer can
four
might want
may have
they
the
spoke of
"a
curse on a
syndromes"
by
considering in
a
by
"family
should
It
be
Deuteronomy
enough
clearly contends that good longer than bad ones; but it also implies that if the
to hold on to the bad ones for a
fuller context, the quotation from traditions, if well founded, tend to last
world
were
not
sticky
have
This
problem,
however, is
innocent
not part of
the story to be
told in this note. Here we shall be speaking of the debt which, from the point of
view of
the
Torah,
we all
owe, guilty
or
of
any
sin or crime.
Although
evidence
we must still
leave
open
the question
of whether
there
is
sufficient
to claim that the author of the Book of Job was aware of that tradition,
the tenor of Zophar's argument is so close to the thoughts contained in the tradition that I thought it not amiss to include this note. The
feeling
a
that Zophar
is
portrayed as
being
is
enhanced
by
is the
only
one
in
the
dialogue to
see, is so
"to bear
perversion,"
which,
as we shall
for
the Torah.
"bear."
The "bear
a
reader cannot
but
notice the
ambiguity in the
word
man can
his shoulders, or another can "bear/lift that off those shoulders, that is, he may forgive him; but then he may have to "bear on his own shoulders. the
perversion"
perversion
on
perversion"
Let
us
begin
by looking
the
for
ourselves at a complete
list
of the passages
in
the Torah in
which
word occurs:
Gen.
4:13
My
The
...
perversion
is too
great
for
me to
bear.
perversion of the
Amorites is
lest
you
[Lot] be
consumed on account of
the perversion of
Gen. 44:16
Therefore
we
will
chalice was
my lord, found.
your
both
in
whose
hand the
Exo. 20:5
the
I the Lord
God
am a
perversion of
fathers
fourth
[generation]
a
of those that
thousand
[generations]
of those that
keep
commandments.
and
.
he [Aaron] shall bear the perversion of the lest they bear the perversion and die.
holy
things
254
Interpretation
The Lord
passed
Exo. 34:6
and
proclaimed, "The
slow
Lord,
the
Lord, is
in
God,
and
keeping
steadfast
but
by
no upon
perversion of
the
fathers
the son and the son's son, to the third and the
fourth
[generation]."
Exo. 34:9
[Moses]. Lev.
5:1 If
anyone sins
in that he hears he
a call to come
testify,
knew
and
he
was
a witness
because he had
about
it but
does Lev.
5:17
shall
bear his
perversion.
in that he does any one of all the things which the Lord commanded him not to do and is unaware, he is guilty and he shall bear his perversion. But he may bring a ram to the priest If
....
Lev.
7:18
If any it be
of the
flesh
of
on the third
credited to
day, he who offers it shall not be accepted, neither shall him; it shall be an abomination, and he who eats of
perversion. you not eat the sin of the
it
Lev. 10:17
shall
Why
[offering] in
it
was given
the
holy
place
because
it is the holiest
the Lord?
holy
and
to
you
to bear the
Lev. 16:21
And Aaron
shall place
on the
head
of
the
goat
him
Israel
....
Lev. 17:16
If he [one
dies
and
of
itself
or
is torn
by beasts]
shall
does
[his clothes]
bear his
Lev. 18:25
Lev. 19:8
and so
its
perversions.
shall
it [a
sacrifice
perversion
because he has
holy
his
things of the
Lord,
Lev. 20:17 Lev. 20:19 A
be
cut off
. . .
from his
people.
has
uncovered
sister's
You
of your
kin; they
shall
bear their
Lev. 22: 14
the
And if
holy thing
fifth
it,
it
the
holy
...
thing.
and
Israel,
Or
their
which
they shall not profane the holy they offer unto the LORD;
suffer then to
holy
things:
You
shall
will
bear the iniquity of trespass, when they eat for I the LORD do sanctify them. be lost among the nations and the land of your enemies
devour
[eat]
you.
Whoever among you is left will rot away in the land of their enemies. Yea, on
on
255
fathers they
shall rot
along
Num.
with them.
....
But if they
said to
.
...
away I will
remember
5:10ff.
Moses.
. .
Say
to the people of
Israel, if any
his
wife
bring
to the
bring
barley meal: he shall pour no oil upon of jealousy a cereal offering of remembrance, bringing
remembrance.
Num.
5:29
case of
goes
jealousy,
astray
and
jealousy
shall set
then
he
execute upon
her
law. The
man shall
woman shall
bear her
perversion.
And now I pray thee let the power of the Lord be great as thou hast promised, saying; "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness, keeping
steadfast
bearing
perversion
but
by
fourth
generation."
Num. 14:19
Num. 14:34
Pardon the
...
I have
pardoned
According
perversion.
to the number of
days in
the
a soul raises
...
his
perversion
is
him.
said to
Num. 18:1
Aaron,
father
with
holy
place,
and
bear the
Num. 18:21ff.
inheritance,
given every tithe in Israel for an But the Levites shall do the service in the tent shall
of
meeting, and
they
bear their
perversion and
it
shall
be
a people
Deu.
5:9
throughout your generations; and among the Israel they shall have no inheritance. For I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the perversion of the father upon the children and the children's
perpetual statute
of
children
....
Deu. 19:15
up
against
any
man
for any
perversion or
any
sin
...
word
is
used
perversion,
was
Cain's
act of
say the
Gen. 4:13
My
perversion
is too
great
for
me
to bear.
256
Interpretation
perversion was committed
by
of
Now it
were all
must
be
remembered
that our
and
shepherds,
living
in tents,
fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even Lot when he flees the hills for the
city thinks it is
to
flee to,
prepared
by saying, "Yonder city is near enough Even he knows that God has not yet it is only a little the way for the city, and that it is no place for a good man, but he is
right
to excuse himself
one."
and
overcome
by
fear.
and
the
founding
put
of
thine."
fence and then a city up This act of radical self-estab his ties to the
roams
lishment
of
he
cut
himself
rest
God's
The
shepherd's
life,
on the other
hand, freely
as all
through
out
laying
claim
is
at
farmers must, is an essentially political act. By setting up a part and making it into a whole, it denies the availability of the given whole, either for oneself, or another. Cain wishes to establish his own world in the fullest sense possible.
home. Cain's
act of
building
fence,
As
the
further
development,
since
arts, too, as
having
their origin
in Cain's perversion,
they
are seen as a
product of
the city.
Gen. 4:20-22
was
the
father
of
have
cattle.
His brother's
name was
the
forger
of all was
iron. The
sister of
Tubal-cain
Naamah.
Of course, many
years
one
day
there will
be the
holy
city
of
Jerusalem, but it
of
will
take
and
many books to
work out
the legitimization
the city. Al
recounting of that story would lead us too far out of our path, we shall in time be forced to reconsider the arts and how the perverse becomes transformed into the holy. (For a more extended account of this subject, see my
though the
at
the center
of
what
by
perversion.
with one
Since
that
incest
is
like oneself,
lying
A
with a sister
is
also
called, has
not a
sin, but
a perversion.
Lev. 20:17
his
sister
uncovered
his
sister's
nakedness; he
bear his
perversion.
The
of the
connection
between
is
underlined
by
the
fact that
Leviticus:
257
wife
Daughter-in-law
male
Wife A
and
her
mother
A beast
woman
20:15
having
sister
her
sickness
Mother's
Uncle's
wife
Brother's
wife
be specifically
You
Lev. 20:19
shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister or of make naked one's near
your
kin; they
shall
bear their
which we will
have
occasion
to reflect
upon
later
and
up is in
connection with
Joseph
discovery
in Benjamin's
bag
Gen. 44:16
Therefore
we
be
slaves to
chalice was
my lord, found.
both
in
whose
hand the
Clearly
years
enough,
when
Judah
spoke of the
perversion, he
was not
thinking
of
fratricide
which
had
almost
before.
And the 'Let
us go
Gen. 37:17
man
said,
"They
saw
have
gone
to
Dothan.'"
So Joseph him
went after
his brothers,
and
found
them at them
Dothan.
They
before he
came near to
they
conspired against
They
said
to one another,
"Here
comes this
kill him
and throw
him
into
one of the
that a wild
of
him,
his
dreams."
Again, the text in 44:16 indicates a relation between fratricide and perversion. Yet, in Judah's words, we can also begin to see some way out. The brothers, not taking well to Joseph's rather imperious character, decided
to kill him. But Reuben was of a more affable character, and,
thought
being
the eldest,
of a bum-
it his
duty
was
something
258
Interpretation
plan was
to
put
Joseph in
pit,
thinking
to come
back later
and return
boy
to his
only
boy
was possible
brothers to
Joseph to
In
order
splendid and
Jacob,
said, "Please to
"Indeed,
much
a wild animal
has
eaten
We
are
Jacob understood,
the
and what
was
kind
the
of a wild
Judah thought
could no
boy
had happened, he
longer
share a
life
with
friend, Hirah
the Adullamite.
sons of
Now, Judah had a daughter-in-law named Tamar, whose Judah, had died. Tamar felt it her duty to raise a
She
her
then threw off
two
seed
husbands, both
in memory
of widow's weeds
her
and,
and
dressing
Hirah
as a whore and
standing
at the
city gate,
Judah
came along.
Judah
slept with
and promised
payment.
In pledge,
she
Judah
city Some time later, Judah heard that his daughter-in-law was about to have a child by harlotry and demanded that she be publicly burnt. But when Tamar
appeared, she
to
recognize"
and
his
staff.
But
when
at the
gate.
produced
the signet and the cord and the staff, and said, "Please
these objects.
recognize"
Those words, "Please to he had heard them once before. Time suddenly became jumbled for Judah. Was it now, or was it then? Who was
speaking?
Jacob? What
was
Was Tamar speaking to him, or was it himself speaking to h;s father was it that he was to "recognize"? Was it the coat, or the staff, or
else?
it something
ready
alike.
and was
to return to
sin or
He had learned from her something about responsibility his brothers. For Judah, that return meant that per
version, unlike
guilt, was a
thing
to be shared among
brothers, guilty
and
innocent
This
responsibility,
and
its
relation
to the concept
of perver
sion, only slowly from the text. Perhaps aspects of the problem can be seen in the following Lev. 5:1 If
anyone sins
one of verse:
in that he hears
a call to come
testify,
and
he
was a
witness
because he had
knew
about
it but does
not speak
This is, perhaps, not the deepest sense of togetherness that Judah was feel ing, yet even here we can see how an otherwise innocent man might find him self responsible because of where and when and with whom he happened to be,
regardless of
how he had
259
in
one other aspect of perversion that comes out of the same chapter
Leviticus.
Lev. 5:17
If Lord
shall
in that he does any one of all the things which the him not to do and is unaware, he is guilty and he bear his perversion. But he may bring a ram to the priest
anyone sins
commanded
....
and another
like it.
And if
Lev. 22:14-16
a man eat of a
holy thing
unknowingly
and so cause
by
eating their
holy
things.
Here,
In
order
assume
perversion seems to
be
intimately
in
connected with
lack
of awareness.
to
make sense of
the passage, I
with a case
reader
is
meant to
is
dealing
lack
due to any
insensitivity
Since he
on
his
part.
only knows about it by hearsay and, as it were, from the outside, he cannot feel any guilt or repentance in the normal sense of the word. He can, of course, feel a deep sense
was unaware of the sin at the time of the act and
of sorrow
because
of the
result, and
a need
feels
a strange
kind
of
guilt,
however, because
same
he
now
an unjust act.
At the
time,
since
there is no need
single act
in the
word, there is no
he
can perform
Bible
perceives as
. . .
fice: "But he may bring a ram to the priest At the very least, this law must remind one
of the
son
be
as
father,
which
he
nonetheless must
shape of
his life
and
source of much
of what
him
since the
day
of
his birth.
To face
and
more
fully
to the
the question of the relationship between ritual sacrifice the passages that
perversion, let
proem
us reconsider
In the
laws
of actions
between
man and
Exo. 20:5
You
shall not
or serve
your
God
am a
perversion of the
fathers
upon of
the sons and the son's son, to the third and the fourth
those that
[generation]
hate
doing loving
love
kindness to
a thousand
commandments.
[generations]
of those that
me and
keep
my
But,
greater
after
needed a gave
understanding
God in
order
to continue as
leader,
God
him
260
Interpretation
The Lord is
passed
Exo. 34:6
before him,
and proclaimed,
God,
loving
kindness
truth,
keeping
steadfast
bearing
sin, but
by
no means clear
perversion of the
fathers
upon
fourth
[generation]."
And Moses
and worshiped.
And he said,
"If
now go
I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray in the midst of us, although it is a stiff-necked people; and
perversion and our
inheritance."
thy
I
And
he said, "Behold, I
"
make a covenant.
Before
will
do
marvels
What
gracious
we
have is
slow
ambiguous.
merciful and
God,
in
loving
asked
kindness
and
truth,
keep
sin."
ing
But
steadfast on
bearing
the other
hand,
when
Moses actually
and of
our perver
sion,"
God
"covenant,"
"marvels,"
spoke of a
perversion."
"bearing
sent to
our
very
After the
men that
Moses had
land
tales, fear
they
It
revolted.
should
be
noted
called a perversion:
Num. 14:34
According to the number of days forty days, for every day a year, you
in
land,
shall
bear
your perversion.
ing
The story of how this early act of perversion led to the necessity of conquer lands not originally intended to be part of the new nation, and the role these
extraterritorial
lands
played
hundreds
of years
of
hands
of the
Assyrians
and the
striking example of one sense of what it means was bome for twelve hundred years till one day it
of
Babylonians has already been because it is such a to bear a perversion. This one
was visited upon the children
the children. But we must return to our subject and consider the second
and
Moses.
was about to abandon of
God
His
again with
father
"a
than
they."
having
argued the
impracticality
promise
back to Him in
a conversation much
very differ
ent results:
Num. 14:17
And now, I pray thee, let the power of the Lord be great as thou hast promised, saying, "The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in
261
loving kindness, bearing perversion and transgression, but who will by no means clear [the guilty], visiting the perversion of the fathers
upon the son and the son's
perversion of this
according thy loving kindness, hast born this people, from Egypt even until Lord said, "I have borne, according to your
to the greatness of
'
word."
word'
"I have borne, according to your Things have changed, and what could not have happened then, now can happen. As we shall see, that change
centers on the
life,
and
ultimately the
Before
we consider those
Moses'
other
account which
ousy, perversion,
priest,
and
an of
possibility of returning to the fullness of normal life. Since the story lives on a more human level, it might be best to begin there:
Num. 5:11-31
said to
Moses.
Say
to the people of
against
lie
astray, unfaithfully her carnally, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she is undetected though she has defiled herself
with
and acts
there
and
is
her,
in the act;
of
if the
jealousy
comes upon
him,
and
he is jealous
his
wife who
upon
has defiled herself; or if the spirit of jealousy comes and he is jealous of his wife though she had not defiled him,
then shall the man
required of
herself;
the
bring
his
bring
meal: a
offering
barley
of
he
offering
jealousy,
offering
of
remembrance,
bringing
perversion to
remembrance.
The
the
priest shall
priest shall
some of
take the
bring her near and set her before the Lord, and holy water in an earthenware vessel, and
that
take
the
dust
is
on the
floor head
of
it in
the water.
of the woman's
and place
offering of remembrance which is a cereal offering jealousy. And in his hand, the priest shall have the water of
the
cereal
curse.
Then the
with
her take
saying "If
no man
has lain
water of
bitterness
that
But if
you
have
gone
under your
husband's authority,
and
you, [then
the
the
woman
say
262
Interpretation
to the woman]
"the Lord
among
your your
Lord
body
swell; may
Amen."
brings
and
bowels
fall
away."
And the
woman shall
say "Amen,
Then the
them off
woman
these curses
and
in he
book
and wash
into the
waters of
water
bitterness;
into her
shall make
the
drink the
brings the
her bitter
pain.
And
offering
jealousy
out of the
hand
bring
it to the altar;
cereal
offering, as its memorial portion, and burn it upon the altar, the
woman
drink
the water.
when
has
made
acted
her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and unfaithfully against her husband, the water that brings the her
and cause
bitter pain,
and
her
body
not
shall swell
an
her thigh
shall
fall away,
become
among the people. But if the woman has herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall
execration children.
defiled
conceive
case of goes
jealousy,
astray
and
jealousy
wife; then he
shall set
the
all
woman
her
this
be free from
but the
woman shall
perversion.
Here
we
have the
his
wife and
is jealous
on
little
But,
as we
green-eyed
is hard to
shake.
In
a case of
proven.
law
at
be
a presumption of
innocence,
be
Within
the sake of
domestic peace, innocence must be proven. The Bible does not wish to defend that fact, but merely to deal with it. Guilt is often a very difficult thing to
establish, but it
or of a
is usually impossible to establish innocence. If the husband is in bad error, disposition, it would be easy to say, "That's his Unfortunately, however, it has become the wife's problem too. The measured and
austere trappings of grave come
problem."
danger. The
ritual
ceremony allow the wife to pass through her trials without is intended to be a way through which the husband can
jealousy,
family
life.
of
understanding
a critical part
biblical
contention that a
formal
play
in
our attempt
life from
and
our
the death
of
Priest,
At
and
only
an odd
handful
list
will remain.
one point
in the
middle of their
said to
263
"Oh, my Lord, I
thou
am not a man of
hast
spoken to
thy
servant; but I am
tongue."
We
him,
first. On the contrary, the more we get to know he seems. But God does seem to have understood some
made
thing,
it was, it
Him very
angry.
Exo. 4:11
said or
him dumb,
him, "Who has made man's mouth? Who deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
to
and
will
be
speak."
But Moses
Exo. 4:13
again
protests,
send, I pray, some other
against
person."
"Oh, my Lord,
the
Then the
anger of
LORD
was
kindled
Moses
and
not
your
brother,
the
can speak
Aaron, behold, he
is coming
heart."
out to meet
of Aaron, and we might be a bit surprised to This anger "Aaron, your brother, the might lead us back to remember the first pair of brothers, and might even momentarily cause us to remember how their own father, Levi, once treated his newly adopted brothers, the men of Shechem; but these ominous feelings soon we
hear
Levite."
anger as
pass,
the two
well.
The
did
first meet, the occasion is quite joyous. The slaves were freed, and slavery is a terrible thing.
even
was
right,
still to
be
minded of the
harm in
marvelous, but after it was over there were many Even before they escaped Egypt, they were re by the innocent among the guilty on the other side.
commanded not to
norm
let it
memory.
Exo. 13:15
For
all the
when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord slew first-born in the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man and
the first-born of cattle. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males
that
first
open
After the escape, they came to a water hole at Marah, but the water was bitter and the people complained. God didn't make much of a fuss though. He
just He
see
showed
Moses
and
tree,
and
Moses
seemed
to know
was
threw
it in
God
how foolish they had been when they came to twelve the bend at Elim. There had been no need for the miracle.
just
around
264
Interpretation
was the affair of the manna and after people showed
Then there
water.
that more
complaints about
that
they
were
incapable
of
trusting
said
to to
the given course of things, but would need miracles, and so the Lord
Moses,
Exo. 17:5f.
Pass
on
before in
the people,
your
taking
Israel;
and take
hand the
and go.
Behold, I
may drink.
will stand
before
there on the
rock at
Nile, Horeb;
that the
it,
"Strike": After
second a
war
person,
with
"Strike."
We
Moses'
rule of
human
can,
so
long
as
by
one.
But
they
are, the
work soon
becomes too
for any
one
ascended
Laws, then, are needed to guide others. So Moses made preparations, Mount Sinai, and received the Law. This was the law that Jethro had
Although it has
a
spoken of.
proem,
Ten Com
a
21-23, is essentially
law
governing the actions of men in their relations with other men. When Moses returned he told the words that he had heard to the people, and only after they had agreed to follow them, did he write them all down in the Book
of
the Covenant.
Exo. 24:7
of
of the
Covenant,
and read
it in the
hearing
they
do,
Thus it
seems to
be
obedient."
accepted
could
once
written
writing down.
in
a great
Exo. 24:3ff.
Lord
and all
the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said,
words which the
Lord has
do."
And Moses
Lord. And he
of the
built
an altar at the
foot
according
Israel. And he
Israel,
who offered
burnt
it in the basin,
and
half
of the
blood he threw
against
265
of the
covenant,
and read
it in the
spoken
hearing
we will
of
they
do,
be
obedient."
And Moses
took the
blood
and
threw it upon the people, and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant
which the
words."
Lord has
in
But
Moses'
sacrifice and
led to
a strange event
concerning two
of
Aaron's sons,
Nadab
Abihu.
Exo. 24:9ff.
Then Moses
elders of
and went
Aaron, Nadab,
up, and
and
Abihu,
God
and of
seventy
of the
Israel
they
saw the
Israel;
and there
was under
his feet
as
it
clearness.
And he did
not
lay
his hand
drank.
Moses'
ceremony,
awry.
which
had
nowhere
somehow gone
Some
readers
may
sense
it in
verse
10,
11, but
most of us
feel nothing
until
it hits
in the
middle of
the Book of
called
Numbers. God, however, saw the Moses back up to the mountain to Tablets
of
problem
at
once, and
immediately
laws
give
him
a second set of
called the
Stone.
saw most
What God
clearly in the
actions of
Nadab
and
Abihu,
and which
in the human
soul which no
law
is
highest
lowest
there
is in the human
The idea We
It is the human
need to sacrifice.
First,
Cain,
nor
Abel,
It is
nor a
Noah
was asked
to give
a sacrifice.
human
origin.
wild
nest of
interwoven
contradictions.
wish
We
When God
that wildness
Moses:
Exo. 24:12
The Lord
wait
said to
Moses, "Come up
there;
and
the TABLETS OF
STONE,
for their
with
the
law
I have
instruction."
written
The
for the
building
too
of
the
and
installation description
of
its
priests.
It
Nadab
The
passage
is
much
long
for
us
wood, or even the lampstand and the turban and the ephod,
but the
266
Interpretation
head
should
reader's
be full
of all
these splendors
when
he
now
discuss.
a wonderful presentation of all the
pomp
and gran
"As
jeweler
engraves
signets,
Israel;
them
in
settings of gold
filigree
....
And
in it four
rows of
stones.
row of
shall
emerald,
And
blue. It
shall
have
opening for the head, with a woven binding around the opening, like the opening in a garment, that it may not be torn. On its skirts you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and
scarlet golden
in it
bell
and a
And
in
checker work of
fine linen,
fine
.
linen,
In the
pageantry,
however,
we
are
serious purpose.
Exo. 28:35ff.
"And it
shall
shall
be
upon
Aaron
when
he ministers,
place
and
its
sound
be heard he
when
he
goes
into
the
holy
comes
gold, and
engrave on
it, like
the
engraving
shall
signet,
'Holy
to
the
Lord.'
And
you shall
fasten it
on the turban
by
lace
of
blue; it
shall
be
on the and
front
It
be
upon
Aaron's
forehead,
Aaron
HOLY THINGS
holy
forehead,
they may be
before the
Lord."
We
read
it, but
we
do
The
rest of
but
Exo. 28:41
"And
Aaron
your
brother,
and upon
his
sons with
him,
them, that they may serve me as priests. And you shall make for them linen breeches to cover their naked flesh; from the loins to the thighs
they
altar
shall
reach; and
go
they
shall
be
upon
Aaron,
and upon
his sons,
when
they
of
meeting,
to minister in the
shall
holy
place; lest
or when
a perpetual statute
for his
descendants
him."
after
267
the installation of
all
Aaron,
if
and
describes the
for
a
perfume
that makes
appointment of
off
Bezalel, but it
came
will make
things clearer
discussion
bit.
down from the mountain, God
gave
When Moses
of this
him
a written
of
form
law,
which
is
again
specifically
referred
to
as
the
Tablets
God.
Stone.
Exo. 31:18
Tablets
of
Stone,
finger
of
Meanwhile,
and said
the people,
despairing
Moses'
of
return,
of
asked
Aaron to
make
rings
Exo. 32:4ff.
"These land
of
are your
gods, O
Israel,
saw
who
brought
you
up
out of the
Egypt!"
When Aaron
this, he built
"Tomorrow
an altar shall
Aaron
Lord."
to
God, showing Himself angry to Moses, threatened to consume them all, and start anew. He said to Moses, as He had once said to Abram, "I will make
nation."
Moses'
answer was a
slow,
reasonable
to the
fathers,
and
if He
were
in the
Exo. 32:9
said
to
seen this
people, and
behold,
I
will
I may consume them; but But Moses besought the LORD his
wrath
of you
God,
and
said, "O
burn hot
of
against
thy
people, whom
out of the
land
Egypt
and
Israel, thy
didst say to
and all
and
by
them, T
multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants,
will shall
they
he
inherit it for
ever.'
"
thought to
do to his
people.
But Moses
perhaps
about?
it
was all
just
test,
and
if it
was a
test,
what was
God testing
Abraham,
let Moses
as
God had, in fact, offered Moses the chance to supplant his father Oedipus had once done to his father. If the point of the test was to
for himself that he was capable of rejecting the chance of sup father in order to save his people, he had done well. planting his But if it was a test of his sobriety and understanding, he had passed in
see
speech, only to
fail in
action.
moment,
everything had
changed:
268
Interpretation
And
as soon as
Moses'
Exo. 32:19
he
dancing,
hands
anger
and
broke
them
camp and saw the calf and the burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his at the foot of the mountain.
Let
us
look
more
closely
at what
not the
book,
Moses actually did in verse 32:19. He but the tablet. This is, presumably, the Tablet of
to give Moses in Exodus 24:12 and
and which were still
which
God had
promised
He
in his hand in
day
he
that according to the Book of Exodus the tablet Moses broke the down from the mountain did not contain what we today, and for
many days gone past, have called the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:2-17. Rather, it was the laws of the tabernacle, Exodus 25:1-31:18. Moses had
seen
placating
for the
on
golden
calf, and he
was a
would
have
it. Even
had homs
different
sort of
a man.
In his
own
bumbling
and
way, he had
seen
irrational in his
out of
side of
own sons
Nadab
of
the Land
Egypt."
he had already seen come out "This is the Abihu; God, O Israel, that brought us What he did not see is that wildness could only be
the
tamed
by
the
intricacy
of art.
Moses'
irrational
reaction
to the irrational meant that while he was the best take onto himself the more dangerous position
of of
could
Cain,
and
we
saw
that the
rise
final
outgrowth of
his
act of perversion.
Later,
saw
poor,
simple
quired a
taste
he, too,
Ham
ended
up
as a
night on which
his
why
his
sons
built
tower,
line
Gen. 15:16
The
perversion of the
Amorites is
perverse
But
the
all
that was
different
now.
The
holy
be
contained
by
by
number.
In
order
God
Exo. 31:3-4
"And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze.
. .
Now
within
we can
begin to
understand
of
death
always
lurks
a
Holy Tabernacle.
it
would not
Moses
have
firmly
269
Moses
Aaron had let them break loose, to their shame among their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, "Who is
on the
Lord's
side?
Come to
me."
And
him. And he
man
said to
them, 'Thus
Lord God
of
his
sword on
every
his companion,
every
neighbor.'"
sons of
and we remember
Hamor,
fully
said,
shall
thy thy
people?
Is it
it be known that I have found favor in thy sight, I not in thy going with us, so that we are distinct, I
all the other people that are upon the said to you
people, from
face
of the
earth?"
spoken
you
do; for
Moses, "This very thing that you have have found favor in my sight, and I know
glory."
by
name."
show me
thy
was
Moses had
slow
a good
merciful,
was
to
learn
to
accept the
Tablets
of
Stone.
said to
Exo. 34:1-7
Lord
Moses, "Cut
will write upon the tablets the words that were on the which you
morning to
of
broke. Be ready in the morning, and come up in the Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top the mountain. No man shall come up with you, and let no man be
mountain; let no flocks or herds feed before
cut two tablets of stone
mountain."
that
So Moses
and
he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. And the Lord descended in the
proclaimed the name of the cloud and stood with passed
him there,
and
before him,
and
proclaimed, "The
Lord,
the
Lord, is
God,
abounding in loving kindness and truth, keeping love for thousands, bearing perversion and transgression and
sin, but
who will
by
no means clear
upon
fathers
fourth
[generation]."
In the
remainder of
the
act that
he has
accepted
maker of
by instituting
Aaron,
Golden
Calf,
emerges as
270
We
lies
Interpretation
cannot spend as much time on
the Book
of
directly
in
our path.
Lev. 10:1-4
Now Nadab
and put
and
Abihu,
the sons of
on
fire in it,
and
laid incense
Aaron, each took his censer, it, and offered unholy fire
And fire
and
before the Lord, such as he had not forth from the presence of the Lord died before the Lord. Then Moses
Lord has said, T
will show myself
came
devoured them,
they
said to
Aaron, "This is
what the
holy
be
among
honored.'"
will
his
peace.
Now
made was
seen all
Moses
drink."
the
sapphire"
uncommanded sacrifice.
vision of
too wild, and it was not the that act which caused
of
It
was
right time to "behold God, and eat and God to call Moses back up to the mountain to
performed a sacrifice with
give
from among the children of at a time when there were no proper priests, and now Aaron's sons are dead; but a promise is a promise, "And Aaron held his
peace."
The
rest of
follows:
Mishael
and
Lev. 10:4-20
And Moses
uncle of
called
Elzaphan,
them, "Draw near, carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the So they drew near, and carried them in their coats out of the camp, as Moses had said. And
Aaron,
and said to
camp."
Moses
said to
Aaron
and to
Eleazar
and
Ithamar, his
do
your
clothes, hang loose, die, and lest wrath come upon all the congregation; but brethren, the whole house of Israel, may bewail the burning
of your
heads
and
which
the
not go out
of
the
anointing And they did according to the word of Moses. And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, "Drink no wine nor strong drink, you nor your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting, lest you die; it shall be a statute for ever throughout your
you."
tent of meeting,
upon
die; for
the
oil of the
Lord is
generations.
You
are to
holy
and
the
common, and
between the
Israel
clean;
by
Moses.
said
And Moses
who were
Ithamar, his
sons
left, "Take
offerings
by
the cereal offering that remains of the fire to the Lord, and eat it unleavened beside the
altar,
for it is
your
most
sons'
holy; eat it in a holy place, because it is your due and due, from the offerings by fire to the Lord; for so I am
But the breast that is
waved and the thigh that
commanded.
is
271
your
daughters
with you;
in any clean place, you and your sons and for they are given as your due and your
offered and the
sons'
due, from
shall
breast that is
waved
they
with
bring
by
fire
of the
fat,
offering before the Lord, and it shall be yours, you, as a due for ever; as the Lord has
Now Moses
and
and your
commanded."
diligently
inquired
about
behold, it was burned! And he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron who were left, saying, "Why have you
not eaten the sin
thing
the
most
holy
and
offering in the place of the sanctuary, since it is a has been given to you that you may bear the
was not
perversion of
part of
the sanctuary.
as
commanded."
You certainly ought to have eaten it in the sanctuary, And Aaron said to Moses, "Behold, today they offering
and their
have
Lord;
the
the sin
Lord?"
offering today, would it have been acceptable in the And when Moses heard that, he was content.
and
his
living
sons
and
from the
he
to
Only
then did
diligently
Eleazar Moses
inquire
angry
and
and spoke
and
was addressed
to him.
was worried
have
hold
of
Aaron,
that he might
of
be unwilling to "eat the sin people. Aaron calmly said that because
offering"
and so of what
to "bear the
perversion"
the
had happened it
day
to
eat
the sin offering, and this time it was Moses who "was
sacrifice as
Thus,
to treat any
if it
were profane
is
a perversion.
Lev. 7:18
If any
the third
credited
of
day, he who offers it shall not be accepted, neither shall it be to him; it shall be an abomination, and he who eats of it shall
perversion.
bear his
There is
of
teen,
six
full
chapters after
discussing
begins:
Lev. 16:1
The Lord
when
spoke to
near
Moses,
after the
death
Aaron,
they drew
and
died.
This is
the author
has
of
indicating
relationship between
272
Interpretation
account
This
begins
by
hood,
is to
of
his
need of the
again warning Aaron of the dangers linen breeches and the girdle, and of the
of
the priest
turban.
Aaron
sacrifice a
Lev. 16:7
the
door
of the tent of
goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron
shall present sin
Lord,
and offer
it
as a
shall
be
presented alive
it,
that it may
be
sent
wilderness to
After
much
preparation,
we read
Lev. 16:20ff.
he has made an end of atoning for the holy place and meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat; and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and
when
"And
the tent of
confess over
him
Israel,
and all
their
transgressions,
of the
he
head
by
the
hand
of a man who
is in
readiness.
The
goat shall
bear
all their
perversions upon
him to
a cut-off
land;
and
he
shall
let the
goat go
in
wilderness.'
the
Which The
into the
cut-off world
is just
central
teaching
of the
ing
Torah concerning the Levites and hence is presented near the beginning of Book
Num
bers:
3:12-13
I
Behold, i have
The Levites
slew all
taken the Levites from among the people of Israel. be mine, for all the first-born are mine; on the day that the first-born of the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own
shall
of men and of
all the
beasts, they
shall
be
mine.
am
the Lord.
We have already
Exo. 13:1 If.
in Exodus:
"What does this
And
when
in time to
mean?"
say to him, "By strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage. For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord slew all the first-born in the
you shall
land
of
Egypt, both
the
first-born
Lord
of
first-born
first
of cattle.
Therefore I
sacrifice to the
open the
first-born
my
sons
redeem."
But
now
the
substituted
for Israel,
and soon
it
will
Aaron.
be only
273
quite
try
to understand the
of
passage
from Numbers
by
going through it
First
"first-bom"
literally
the
means
"the
chosen,"
but in
imply
first-bom. "The
chosen of the
simply necessarily the best fruits. But among men, there is always a struggle between the two meanings. In what sense can Levi be understood to be the first-bom? In fact, Reuben
means the
not was
field"
first fruits,
the
first-bom,
Gen. 29:32
And Leah
conceived and
bore
Reuben.
called
"the
chosen one":
"the
people of
Reuben, Is
rael's
And
to
be
called
"the
chosen one":
Num. 26:5
Reuben,
the
first-bom
of
of
family
of
the
Hanochites;
Israel; Pallu,
family
of the
Hanoch, Palluites;
the
the
one might
say, a
jolly
bumbler. He
was
boy
that
found
and gave it to his playing in the fields mother (Genesis 30:4). But when Rachel died, and his father was out of town, he slept with Rachel's handmaid Bilhah. I suppose he thought that his father's
the mandrake
suppose while
connection as
was
I say, incompetent
did
Of the sons, he
was
the first to
a
try
to rescue Joseph. He planned to have the to return later and take the
pit,
intending
boy
home.
And they
Behold,
this
dreamer
cometh.
Come
now
therefore,
let
us
slay him, and cast him into some beast hath devoured him: and we
said, Let
become
of
he delivered him
out of their
hands;
and
and
no
us not cast
kill
said unto
them, Shed
blood, but
no
him
is in the wilderness,
out of their
lay
to
hand
upon
him;
he
might
rid him
hands,
father
again.
However,
worked.
as
his
much wiser
have
The boys
plan of
were
they
would
have found
another occasion.
Judah's
getting the
boy
out of the
Reuben later
was
returned
country was much wiser. When it was empty, he thought the boy
never
dead
and rent
his
Apparently, he
knew
of
Judah's
alternative
plan.
were standing before Joseph in fear, he had happened to Joseph and to feel the guilt.
was
the
first to
274
Interpretation
And Reuben
the
answered
Gen. 42:22
lad? But
you would
them, "Did I not tell you not to sin against not listen. So now there comes a reckoning
for his
blood."
When he
returned
to
Canaan,
trying
to persuade
Jacob to
boy
Benjamin
them back to
Egypt, it
was
Reuben
said,
Gen. 42:37
Slay
my two
sons
if I do
not
bring
him back to
you.
Of course, that
would
But, Isaac,
were
as we said so
far
as
before, know,
Reuben
was
be the very last thing that Jacob would have wanted. was a decent fellow, but quite a bumbler, and
the only man chosen because he was a bumbler.
and
Levi
were always
treated as a pair.
They
the two who attacked the men of Shechem after the affair with Dinah. It's
a rather
troubling
account.
a manner of
speaking, the
men of
Shechem
two
houses to his
own people
Gen. 34:20ff.
So Hamor
let
and
his
son
Shechem
came
friendly
them
land is large
enough
us
marriage, and
will
let
daughters.
Only
are
on this condition
us, to
become
every
among
us
circumcised as
they
Yet,
when
he
added
the words
Gen. 34:23
"Will
not their
ours?
Only
Hamor
made
let
us agree with
them,
and
they
will
dwell
us."
with
it
clear
establishment of
the
just
and
holy
nation which
brothers then
defending
promise,
they just
a pair of
prognostication
is
somewhat strange.
Gen. 49:5ff.
Simon
swords.
and
Levi
are
brothers;
into their council; O my spirit, be not joined to their company; for in their anger they slay men, and in their
come not wantonness
O my soul,
they hamstring
in Israel.
oxen.
fierce;
for it is
cruel!
and
scatter them
275
he clearly has in
injustices
which that
led to
Dinah in Chapter
prediction was
The Sons
of
priests.
But
since
they
were
distributed
throughout the
land, they
received no
Num. 18:20
said
to
Aaron, "You
shall
have
no
inheritance in
am your
land,
came
Simon's fate, on the other hand, from the tribe of Simon, and
was
total obscurity. No men of importance the men of that tribe settled within
most of
the
borders
of
of
Judah. Of the
all
Simon in the
to the
Book
Joshua,
but five
cities granted
Before the
settlement of the
land, Simon
had fallen to 22,200, less than any other tribe. By the end of the Book of Deuteronomy the tribe appears to have no independent existence whatsoever, hence it is the only tribe which does not Moses just before his death (Deuteronomy 33).
and even receive a
blessing from
left
Egypt, by Thus,
went
the time
they
reached
the promised
land,
had been
Israel."
completely
Simon
to
absorbed
by
Judah
each and
in its Levi
own
way
"divided in Jacob
in
drawn;
one
God,
to
Azazel,
as
if it didn't
which.
The glory
possible.
It
again
should also
be
Joseph
chose a
hostage
at
fell
upon us
Simon.
more
Now let
look
closely
at
Num. 3:12-13
Behold, I have
Israel. The Levites
the
people of are
be mine, for
first-born
of
mine; on
day
that
slew all
the first-bom
land
Egypt, I
of men
consecrated
for my
and of
beasts, they
be
mine.
Lord.
First, it
incurred
must
be
noted
that Israel
itself
neither was
nor was
it
at their
direct
.
request.
Rather, it
was
incurred
by
slew.
look
at
276
Interpretation
as the people
Insofar
had
a request,
it
was:
Exo. 2:23-25
In the
course of those
king
of
the people of
Israel
groaned under
bondage,
for
help,
with
and their
cry
under
bondage
up to God. And
covenant with
God heard
God
remembered
his
Isaac,
and with
saw
the people of
condition.
It
would
be hard to think
of a more
just
The
by
saying:
I have
heard
and
my people who are in Egypt, and have because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, cry I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyp
seen
the affliction of
their
tians,
a
and to
land
bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites,
the
the
Hittites,
Amorites,
the
Perizzites,
the
Hivites,
Jebusites.
me,
and
And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians
oppress them.
words are:
When
you go
do before Pharaoh I
will
all
in
power; but
heart,
so that
he
will not
let the
people go.
And
you shall
Pharaoh, Thus
to you,
says the
"Let my son go that he may serve me"; if him go, behold, I will slay your first-bom son.
you refuse
The
conclusion seem
to
be that for the Bible, man is responsible for the ill his own existence, even though he may have in no
which we
way participated in their coming to be. There were many other stories of Aaron
do
not
His
fire
pans
of
brought
story:
Aaron's became
Aaron's
the way
he
plague,
Aaron,
of
though not
That, too, is part of be nature. Then, too, there Moses, could run into their
tree.
it.
the
Now It
we must go to
desert
Zin.
all over again: and this time almost as
was the
was
moved.
exactly like the beginning Then it was the desert of Sin, The
in
all these years.
it
desert
people revolted
for lack
said:
of water.
Not
had
277
Behold, I
drink.
will stand
before
Horeb;
and you
rock,
it,
"Strike!"
second
person,
imperative,
"Strike!"
singular,
God
again
Num. 20:8ff.
your
brother,
and speak
to the rock before their eyes to yield its water; so the rock for them; so you shall give
you shall
bring
water out of
drink to the
rod
he
commanded
Aaron
assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, Hear now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his rod
twice;
and water came
forth abundantly,
and
the congregation
drank,
second
person,
imperative,
that
singular. people
had their
water
day, but
Num. 20:12
Because land
you
did
not
me
in the
eyes of
Israel,
therefore
bring
this assembly
into
which
I have
given them.
"You
shall not
bring":
second
person,
future,
plural.
Aaron
will
die for
what
finally
full meaning of the end of God. Moses had said, "I am not a man of
understand
the
Moses'
first
con
speech,"
and this
is
It
he
meant.
Like
anger
once caused
the Tablets of
Stone,
and now
it had
Aaron,
your
brother,
the
Levite?"
They, too,
azar went
were
brothers, like
top
of
die because
and
of
Moses, Aaron,
Ele
up to the
Mount Horeb
stripped and
Num. 20:28
And Moses
Then Moses
Aaron
of
his garments,
on
the
top
of the mountain.
Eleazar
mountain.
Israel. I've
never
been
how Aaron died. I only know that his son Eleazar became High Priest, but whenever difficulties and bloodshed arose, he was silently replaced by his son
Phineas.
278
Interpretation
a perversion
If there is may
escape
lying
behind
civilization
it does
not mean
that one
by
returning to the
If he [one
prepolitical:
Lev. 17:16
dies
of
itself
or
is
he
torn
shall
by beasts] does
bear his
not
wash them
perversion.
[his clothes]
bathe his
flesh,
It is
can
also
perversion
is
"faced"
not
and
dealt with, it
kill
a nation.
so once:
Lev. 18:25
and so
punished
its
perversions.
and that
it
can
do
so again:
Lev. 26:38f.
You
shall
will
devour
be lost among the nations and the land of your enemies [eat] you. Whoever among you is left will rot away on in the land
of their enemies. shall rot
.
Yea,
on
fathers they
.
away along
. . .
But if they
will remember
Only
seems
two quotations
from
our
list remain,
may
read
them as
best.
If him.
Num. 15:31
a soul raises
...
his
perversion
is
upon
Deu. 19:15
up
against
any
man
for any
perversion or
any
sin
...
The
was
aware of
eyes of
means
see as men
it, Job
says
by
as our
probe
back
sin?"
which
its
origins
workings out of
view except
realm
ken. No
God's
is large
enough
to
make sense of
enough
5. The problem, according to Zophar, is not merely one of having a large horizon. It is the myriad of little separate worlds, each of which might
claim a
suddenly come into contact with any other, or other. No world can perceive its effect on any
them
being
apart
together, and then it is too late. 6. This incommensurability is only apparent and is due to the limited charac ter of man's superficial view of his own world. But if man were to clean his
279
heart
of all
injustice,
and
trust in
God,
all would
be well,
is
visible.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1 Then Job
learning
fall
a
joke2
will
short of
yours.'
2 "You are, indeed of the people and with you die, 3 but like you, I too have some understanding which does not Who is not capable of such things? 4 But now I have become
answered and said:
to my
friends,
for
'Call
on
God
and
have him
answer'
joke,
simple,
who can
always scorn
But it's
out
slip.3
6 Oh, there is
God,4
peace enough
in the tents
of robbers and
which
placed
they
will show
or the
will
with
it
teach you.
the hand
of
all
these
does
not
know that it
of
every
living thing
for
and
bodily
11 Does
the old or
not
the ear
try
of
words as
12 Is
wisdom
does length
days
make
understanding?
13 With Him
and what
His
understanding, 14
He tears down
ever reopened.
be
rebuilt.
He
closes
in
on
a man and
nothing is
soundness.
15 He
errs8
restrains
land is
overturned.
16 With Him
Both the
one who
and
He
makes counselors
undoes
18 He
19 He
obliterates pours out
ravaged;
and subverts
the mighty.
elders.
20 He
21 He
trustworthy
from the
disgrace
looses the
girdle of
22
He
He
out
unveils
deep
darkness; He leads
24 He
into the
light.10
23 He
then He
them.
He leaves
earth.
them.
obliterates
wander
heads like
of
He
makes
them
no path. a
25
They
grope
in the darkness
without a
light. He
drunken
man.12
Comments
people, while Job is
1.
alone
They live in
a world which
they
in his. Perhaps they understand that world as is only one and all must be heard.
well as
280
Interpretation
laugh"
2. "a
a certain with
kind
of respect
for Zophar's
wisdom of cannot
the ages,
time, reflection,
and
belief, he
totally ignore
is
things, the immediate look of things as it reveals itself to anyone immediately involved. But the surface is all too easily forgotten, and its
be
escaped
by turning
tance
in his thought, this notion of immediate involvement is of prime impor for Job. Without it things are merely the way they are said to be. 4. The meaning of the text is obscure.
the great Psalms like
God."
5. For Job, this is the unintended irony lying behind Nineteen, "The heavens are telling the glory of 6. The
"hearing" "breath,"
"wind,"
"spirit."
or
Job is
wrapped
between
of
and
"taste"
of
the
imagery
and of the
"palate"
is
of some
help
in
our attempt
to understand what
Job
means
by
knowing. The
Can
subject
first
came
up in:
does
the slime of an
Job 6:6
what
is tasteless be
egg
They
are
like
Taste is
what makes
knowledge
worth while.
The taste
of a world
is
what
livable. Unlike seeing, taste includes the most important as object, its beauties and its uglinesses. Knowledge is not a passive itself to
us
It
presents
in
such a
way that
we cannot
but
react.
of
At this stage,
to know to
is
not
the
knower, but
both
under out
ingest
a part of the
object,
either
is
an organ of
speech, as if the
thing.
knowing
coming in
going
He
elders.
trustworthy
and yet
from the
There is
no
injustice
on
my tongue,
does
not
my
palate
of ruination.
At
a certain point
says:
Job 29:10.
The
hushed,
and
their palate,
and
for
an ear
had heard
it blessed me;
had
cried
seen
he
out,
help
him.
says:
281
speak.
Behold, I
open
my lips,
in my
palate
begins to
From these two statements, it's hard to know exactly what is meant by the "palate." word The least one can say is that it is an organ of taste and of speech: that it is not the tongue itself, but something which, in some way or another,
can contain
the tongue.
says:
When Job
Job 31-30
Could I have
come to over to sin
rejoiced when
evil
hardship
hate
me or
life because
by
is
had found them, without giving my asking for his life with a curse.
not
palate
he
means that
his
speech
merely on the tip of his tongue, from within and hence implies room inside,
as we some
out of which
if
he
you
like. He
or
means
that speech
would
by
pleasure or curse as
pain, anger
spoke an
delight. He
adds
in his
it. This
least,
there
immediate
interrelationship bordering
concerning
unity He
of an
object,
awareness of
it, human
speech
it,
and
human
reaction
to it.
that speech can only be
means
feeling
because it is
8. The
word used
implies
9. The kaleidoscopic
world about
"belt"
disarray
which
Job
sees
in the
captured
by
language
of the text.
The
word
for
is the
Further,
undoes
loins."
the word
"discipline."
say:
"He
the discipline of
kings
and
disciplines
In
other
words,
civil
by forcibly
discipline
about their
a
replaced word
by
loincloth.
also
The
effect
is
enhanced
in Hebrew
by
for
"strip"
sounds as
if it
came
from the
a
same root:
"He
undoes
the discipline
of
kings
and
disciplines them
10.
Job 10:21f.
by
discipline
about their
loins."
Well, I
will
a a
land land
of
darkness light is
and
whose
light is
darkness,
A land
darkness."
whose
At this point, for Job, the taunting chaos underlaying chaos which we do not see. 11.
causes
we see
is only
a reminder of a
true
them to perish
12. The
ously, is
a
surface
has
of
committed
seri
full
of roads to
nowhere.
But for
Job, it's
all
it is
through that
it
always
finds itself.
282
Interpretation
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
you
1 "All this my eye has seen; my ear has heard and understood. 2 Whatever know, I know, nor do I fall short of you. 3 I would speak with the Al
I
wish
mighty!
lies. 5 Who
6 Hear my argument; listen to my quarrel. 7 Would you speak unjustly for God's sake? For His
treachery?
words of
8 Would
Him favor
or argue
His
case
for him. 9
you
Will that be
you can
your ace
in the hole if
He
Do
think
deceive Him
as you can
deceive
10
Certainly
He Himself
Him
even a
His
preference not
be to terrify
ash,
your
bulwarks, bulwarks
of
For
for my sake. I will speak, let come upon me what may. 14 do I take my flesh between my teeth and my life in my hands? 15 It may be that He will slay me. I have no higher None the less I will defend my ways before Him. 16 That too has become for me salvation, 13 Be
silent now what reason
expectations.2
Him.3
17 Listen, listen to my
out
With
to my declaration. 18 I
my
case and
I know I
as
shall
be
vindicated.
Now,
me and
shall no
your me.
and
let
not
up and I will reply, or let me speak and You shall give answer. 23 How many are my perversions and my sins? Let me know my transgres sion and my 24 Why do You hide your face from me and think of me as
vices.4
Your like
enemy?
me
like
driven leaf?
or put me
to
flight
up
a piece of
dry
against me and
bring
the perversions of my
27 You
put
my feet in the
stocks.
You
scrutinize
my every wandering. You circumscribe the foundation under my feet, 28 and all becomes worn out like a rotten thing like a piece of clothing that the moths have
eaten.6
Comments
1. Job begins this
and
part of
his
fully
is
understood the
such
not capable of
defending
a new
he says; "I would speak with the Almighty! I wish to argue with God." To uphold the tradition by denying the surface, or as Job thinks of
plastering
over
its
it, by
they
wounds with
lies,
that
is, by calling
things just
when
283
to
foundation foundation
meet
of
be just, is ultimately destructive of the tradition itself. The tme the tradition must ultimately lie at ease with the surface, and any
and,
by implication,
cannot
terms, is a "bulwark of 2. This is the ketir (what is actually written). The geri (how the tradition says it is actually to be read) would give "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
on
it
its
own
clay."
Him."
with
the psalmic
litterateur. There is
what must
have
My
Lord,
and
me salvation.
which occurs
and
it is
me salvation.
Job, by
biblical
character to
play
with
once said
If
the
Syrians
shalt
become for
me salvation.
caught
worlds.
The
surface and
human integral
care
have demanded
courage
what wisdom
case of part
Socrates, Job's
of
no existence
in its
right, but is
of
an
his grasp
of the
importance
of the question
in front
him. Job
must act
in
human concerns,
phrase
while
feeling
the
full
weight of wis
dom's
prohibition.
salvation,"
me
he has
"That
as
if to
suggest that
kind
of
In light
of the
first
verses of
suggests a need
attempt
the
God, in
the
Oracle, by taking
that
facing
We
in
verse
that
it
was a
lack
of
courage
4. At this
Job
pauses
no
reply, he
5. In this passage, Job, too, associates perversion with the long-distant past, a long-distant dead past. This was not the first time. Back in
said:
284
Interpretation
Have You
eyes of
Job 10:4
Can time
mean
Do Your
by
as our years,
back into my perversions and track down my sin? Somewhere in Your mind I am not guilty, and yet there is none to
You
probe
save
me
Not
perversion
but the
writings
charge
of perversion a
is the true
source
of
human
man
suffering.
Told in
that
he is heir to
a
long-forgotten perversion,
is
denied
straw
a past on which
to build
piece of
dry
blowing
the problem
of
being
watched:
Job 7:18
Yes,
spit.
and
will you
let
me
inspect him every morning and test him every minute. When be? You'll not even let me alone to swallow my own I have sinned,
what
Supposing
a
Watcher Of Man?
Why
even
have
become
burden
to myself?
Why
transgressions or
dust. You
will
shall
And
again
in Chapter Ten.
Your dealings
with me were
Job 10:12ff.
full
of
life
and
loving
care.
Your
guardianship watched over my spirit. But You treasured all these things in Your heart. I know what You have in mind; if I sin You'll
be watching and You'll not clear me from my perversion. Well if I have been guilty the grief is mine, but even when I am innocent I
have been
me and
feeling
of
honor is left in
see
only my feebleness.
do
so again:
Job 14:16
Then You
no
longer
would
You
keep
the watch
and
for my
sin.
My
transgression would
be
sealed
up in
a pouch
my
perversions.
It is this
sense of
being
watched,
of
because
of what
he is, because
suffer
not because of anything he has done, but his inherited perversion, that has reduced Job
to nonbeing.
People do indeed
as some
for
but to
regard that
form
of poetic or even
divine justice
required to
rather than a
horrible necessity is
honor
look
at
right the
view of
6. Here his
we get a closer
Job's first He
can
lay
out
case and
it
can
be
made solid.
exact nature of
285
the charges laid up against him and their precise number. Such is the nature of all the evidence, but it is not clear that there is any way of presenting such
evidence
means of
in the
other court.
Like
Socrates,
piece of
human speech, but unless or sees, or knows will be worth the Cf. note to 7:21.
room can
can only speak or reply by be left for it, nothing that Job has, clothing that the moths have eaten.
Job
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1 Man up You
as a
('adam)
Your
is born
of
woman,
short-lived and
full
of rage.
2 He
sprouts
fresh bud
and withers.
He flits
by
3 Can
to
open
eyes even
to
one such as
You?2
that,
along
the
with
him'
4 Who
he
can
bring
a clean
thing
out
of an
thing? Not
one!3
keep
number of
his
months. gaze
You have
and
set
him limits
cannot overstep.
as a
6 Then
are
turn Your
from him
a
let him
be,
so
long
as
his days
hireling
itself
and
acceptable.4
7 For
cut
down, it
old
never wanes.
8 When its
then
at
roots
become
10 But
in the land
the dust to
die, 9
a
and its sprouting its stump is left in it bursts into bloom and sends out renews
branches like
and
is
no
sapling.
when a man
(gebher) dies,
is he? 11 The is dried
up.
he
perishes
('adam)
river
expires,
and where
waters are
gone
from the
The
becomes
12 A
man
lies down
roused
they
be
from their
slumber.5
13 Who
passes?
can move me a
You to hide
me
in the Pit
and conceal me
till
your anger
Set
fixed limit
again?
14 If
a man
(gebher) dies,
waited
will
he
come
back to life
of
my
service
I have
in
expec
would call.
hands.6
You
work of or
Your
on
16 Then
for my
longer
17
would
You
keep
track
sion would
be
be
the
watch
My
transgres
and
You
perversions.7
18 A
place.8
mountain
and crumbled
away,
a rock
19 The
the
stones
away
and
the land.
and
trashed9
all mortal
man,
he has
You knew
mangled of
his face
were
him
off.
21 His
was
sons were
honored but he
it.
They
unaware.10
22 His
pain,
and
Comments
1. Note the
change
will
defend
not
himself simply,
but
mankind
in his
own person.
286
Interpretation
not
2. Man is
the
best
of
yet
He is, in fact, "bom of that is the man whom Job has chosen
to defend. Is God willing to judge mankind in terms of the highest goals of which they are capable, or will He insist upon the highest simply? It is one
thing
judged
by
from within, but to feel constantly to ever be made to feel wanting is, for
Job,
of a
3. Justice
from
man, or of a tree, would is thinking at this juncture might nature in its classical sense.
thing the highest possible; to demand more be unjust. One wonders if these thoughts that Job
each
not
be
part of what
led
man's nature is limited, a way must be found for him to be. 5. The compelling mood of this passage lies in the capacity of a man with thoughts so laden with death to give such full articulation to a world bursting
with
4. If
life.
of the slumber of a wonderful
6. Thoughts
and now
he is slowly There is
drifting
off
into
daydream in
into
a single world.
All the
made
answering.
Job
no
wide world
for
man and
for God.
7. Job's daydream
and the din of the clashing thousandfold, and the surface world has been nothing left but the pain of the lost dream.
worlds
has been
magnif
ied
washed away.
There is
9.
caused to perish
verse seems rather
10. This
stand
able
to under
it
as
should wish.
The best I
and
do is to
Job
suddenly
wakes
feeling
not
gruffly
awakened
the
problem
the clashing worlds, his fall from the dream, his first thoughts concern of perversion, but its inverse. The problem has shifted from an
by
overburdensome awareness of
father
on
the
part of
the son, to an
agonizing lack of awareness of the acts of the son have not been able to see the implications of the
father, but I
shift.
"A Soldier
Macbeth
and
and
Afeard":
of
the
Gospelling
Scotland
Paul A. Cantor
University
of Virginia
regard the
bad
contract
fundamental
that
society
.
.
and of peace.
.
Suddenly
all their
instincts
were
disvalued
and
"suspended."
They
felt
undertakings; in this
new world
they
no
longer
possessed their
former guides,
their regulating,
unconscious and
were reduced to
. . .
thinking, inferring,
they
never
been
such a
not
feeling
of
misery
on
earth
instincts had
or
their usual
demands!
Only
it
was
hardly
they had
Friedrich Nietzsche, On
Genealogy
of Morals
but revealing moment occurs in Macbeth when the newly is king trying to convince some desperate men to murder Banquo for him. Claiming that in the past Banquo thwarted their advancement, Macbeth A
seldom noticed crowned challenges more
the
chosen murderers:
'Will
you
take this
injury lying
down?'
But
specifically his
challenge
you
mm the
other cheek?':
Do
Your That
patience so predominant you can
you
find
in
your nature
let this
go?
Are
you so gospell'd,
To pray for this good man, and for his issue, Whose heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave,
And
beggar'
yours
for
ever?
(III.i.85-90)1
In Macbeth's
remarkable use of
here,2
we can
hear the
noble
warrior's contempt
injury
without responding.
Macbeth is getting
interpretation,
Spring 1997,
Vol.
24, No. 3
288
Interpretation
manhood
is
being
questioned,
they reply
murderers
ac
"We
liege"
are
men, my to
articulate
(III.i.90).
are
goes on
Ay, in
the catalogue ye go
for men,
curs,
As hounds
Shoughs,
All
water-rugs, and
demi-wolves
the
valued
are
dipt
by
the name of
dogs;
file
The house-keeper,
the
hunter, every
one,
nature
According
to the
gift which
bounteous
Hath in him clos'd; whereby he does Particular addition, from the bill That
writes
receive
(III.i.91-100)
In its
sense that all
dogs
equal, this
speech embodies
the aristo
cratic or you
who
heroic
conception of manhood.
merely run-of-the-mill know how to stand up for themselves? The distinction Macbeth is making
captured
Macbeth is asking the murderers: Are human beings or are you real men, he-men, men
is best
run
aner and
anthropos.3
The Homeric hero is he-man, human beings (anthropoi) by virtue of his strength and courage. In Homer, the difference between the hero and the ordinary human being is often
aner, a
raised above
the ordinary
of
presented as
like the
contrast
between
base dogs in Macbeth's speech, trast between tame and wild species drawn earlier in
noble and
"sparrows"
or even more
like the
con
the
"eagles"
talks of
or
"the
hare"
versus
hierarchy among human beings: some are noble and some are base and they are so by Taking the view that a noble man would scorn to receive an injury tamely, Macbeth tries to shame the potential murderers into doing his will. But he realizes that this notion of noble heroism
Macbeth
nature.4
may be
of
challenged
in Scotland. A
of
new gospel
is
abroad
in the land,
opposed
which
teaches a
Christian way
life,
humility,
to the
way Shakespeare develops the tragedy of Macbeth out of this tension between the heroic warrior's ethic and the gospel truth. The story of Macbeth gave Shake speare a chance to portray a world in which Christianity has penetrated and indeed back
changed
life
of the warrior.
the
fabric
of
society, but in
nostalgically is too
weak a word
gospelled.
caught
Shakespeare
seems to
between two
ways of
life,
In his tragedies, he
chose
locales that
allowed
clash of ethical
alternatives,
"A Soldier
Afeard"
and
289
ting his
life
action at a point of
intersection,
cross.
The Scotland
of
Macbeth is
such a
border land. It
seems to
lie
at
the
crossroads of two
poised
of
between
by
attacks
by
more primitive
west and
the
"kerns
gallowglasses"
and
barbaric
terms
said of
troops.5
To the
Norway (I.i.12, 31). These soldiers are referred to (Li. 13), archaic terms that suggest foreign and south of Scotland lies England, presented within the
the
play
as a more
fully
to have
scribed
To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
That
And sundry blessings hang about his throne speak him full of grace. (IV.iii. 155-59. See
also
III.vi.26-34.)
In the
symbolic
geography
and
of
between
than
Norway
situation
Norway
England.6
This
other
is
tragedies. In
Othello, for
example, Cyprus
Venice
the Otto
Empire,
division
Othello's
the
soul.
An
even
geography
of
Macbeth
can
Denmark
lying
fringes
a
of
European
civilization.
To the
Denmark
and
lies,
again,
Norway,
land
of warlike of
Fortinbras,
south
and
hence the
source of the
Homeric heroism
Christian
To the
lie the
civiliza
tion,
such as
Paris
Wittenberg. The
within
again reflect
divisions
tween
paganism and
Christianity, especially
similar, and
when
the
duty
of re
venge,
a task
responses.7
embodies a characters
stronger,
sense of
geography
as
find themselves
oldstyle pagan
poised
between the
of
poles of
Norway
and
heroism
represented characters
by
The Scottish
in Macbeth
believing
sacri-
Christians. Christian
Macduff's
report of
expressions come
readily to their
when
lips,
the
death
of
Duncan,
he
speaks of
how "Most
290
Interpretation
temple"
legious
murther
hath broke
ope
/ The Lord's
anointed
(II.iii.67-68).
shows
the influence of
Christianity,
as
his
wife notes
is wondering
whether
he really is up
to the challenge of
becoming
king:
It is too full
th*
To
Art
Thou but
wouldst
be great,
without
it. What
thou wouldst
highly,
(I.v. 16-21)
wouldst
thou
holily.
Lady
the
Macbeth here
thinks of
same
terms
he later
applies
to
murderers of
Banquo; his
religion threatens to
undermine
his
heroic
manliness.
But there
Christianity
of the characters
with
in Macbeth does
pagan notions.
deep,
or
that
confused
older,
inability
prayers:
Macb.
the other, and One cried, "God bless As they had seen me with these hangman's hands.
us!"
"Amen!"
List'ning
Lady M.
Macb.
their
fear, I
"Amen,"
could not
say
us!"
not so
deeply.
pronounce
"Amen"?
I had
most need of
blessing,
"Amen"
and
Stuck in my throat.
(n.i.24-30)
Macbeth's Christianity, but in fact it points to a certain superficiality in his embrace of the newer religion. He thinks of Amen as a kind of pagan talisman, a magic formula that can be me
Someone
might offer this passage as proof of
chanically invoked, even by a criminal in the middle of his crime. As this passage suggests, Macbeth would gladly take any benefits he might obtain from
not
fully
demands the
religion makes
understands
incompatible
to reduce
his
attempt to
pray like
case suggests
that
by
other
forces. In the
minds of
like Macbeth, older pagan ideas with newer Christian beliefs. mixing
force, strangely
"A Soldier
II
Afeard"
and
291
This
analysis of the
play.
basic
situation
in Macbeth helps
explain
Duncan's
prob
lem in the
that
is
not
fully
Duncan is trying to act like a Christian monarch in a country Christianized and that thus retains a strong element of an older,
heroism. He is obviously not a warlike king; when we first see him he is allowing his nobles to do his fighting for him.8 When characters in (I.ii), the play speak of Duncan's good qualities, they never credit him with the kind
savage
of virtues associated with a
of
king's military function. Rather they tend to speak his generosity or, in a key speech by Macbeth, of his meekness and his ability to evoke pity (I. vii. 16-25). In all these respects, he seems to resemble
England's Edward
rather
than the
bellicose
king
of
Norway.
By his
own admis
sion, Duncan is too trusting of humanity, blind to the ambition lurking in the hearts of his nobles (I.iv.12-15). Within the terms of the play, he is presented as
an
anomaly in Scotland (see Sanders, Shakespeare's Magnanimity, p. 69). All field generals like Macbeth,
and
must
Banquo,
he his
the war:
into battle; instead stand on the sidelines, receiving reports, asking like an outsider to "What bloody man is (I.ii. 1). Duncan is crucially dependent on
Macduff.
Only
Duncan does
that?"
not
lead his
troops
great nobles
and
invaders.9
error
is
not
insecure his
of elective
kind
truly is. The Scotland of the play is presented monarchy, one in which the powerful nobles have a say in
position
king
cannot
be
said
the great nobles, but he is so dependent on their military power to support him that he must constantly work to maintain their allegiance. Duncan's generosity
with
titles, honors,
makes one
and gifts to
his thanes is
nominate?
But he Duncan
archy,
key
error:
he
a way of Malcolm
dealing
as
with of
this problem.
Prince
Cumberland,
of
Scotland.10
thereby trying
as
acts as
if he
were
already
living
king of hereditary
mon
if he
were
in
fully
civilized
England
Scot
land.
one
By prematurely naming Malcolm as his successor, Duncan of the holds a king in his circumstances has on his thanes.
loyal to him in the hope that he
would
undermines
They
might
eventually throw his weight in favor of one of them succeeding him to the throne. Certainly Duncan's designa tion of Malcolm as his successor proves disastrous as the action unfolds, pro
remain
king,
allowing
events to
to
understand
he is the head. Moreover, he seems temperamentally unsuited to main in a land in which constant warfare has become a way of life. The rule taining civil war in Scotland with which the play begins is testimony to Duncan's
292
failure
Interpretation
as a
point made
explicitly in his
source
in
Holinshed's Chronicles:
Duncans
after
reigne was verie quiet and
The
beginning
of
peaceable,
without anie
notable
trouble; but
it
was perceived
how
negligent
he
was
offendors, manie
quiet state
misruled persons
of the common-wealth,
wise.
by
p.
beginnings in this
(Bullough,
of of
488)
rule on
which
Duncan's
The very
meekness
Duncan,
him
admirable
as
Christian,
works against
principles of
his
success as a
king
in
a warlike society.
the ethical
Christianity
politics even
in the
rough-
and-tumble world of
Scottish
when
Lady
she
precisely because,
is morally innocent:
I have done I
am no
harm. But I
world
in this earthly
to
do harm
Is
often
laudable,
to
do
good sometimes
Why
then, alas,
This idea
of a
double standard,
of a conflict
often
imaged,
The
germ of
be found in Holinshed's
Dun
Macbeth's:
if he had
been
Makbeth
cruell of realme. wished
[was]
not
somewhat
nature, might
On
the
inclinations
have beene
so tempered
much of
extremities
and enterchangeablie
had too
clemencie,
might
have
by
in them both,
Duncane have
p.
proved a woorthie
king,
Makbeth
an excellent capteine.
(Bullough,
488)
By juxtaposing
We
are used to
cruelty
and
points
to the contrast be
Christianity.12
concentrating on the tragedy of Macbeth, but the play also presents the tragedy of Duncan, tragically caught between the more civilized notion of Christian kingship embodied in Edward the Confessor and the more primitive
notion of
the
king
as
battlefield warrior,
embodied
in the
person of
Norway.
"A Soldier
This
contrast
Afeard"
and
293
in
notions
of
speare's source
in Holinshed
kingship is expressed most vividly in Shake by the traitor, Makdowald, who calls Duncan "a
goveme a sort of valiant and
faint-hearted milkesop, more meet to cloister, than to have the rule of such
Scots
were"
idle
monks
in
some
hardie
in Holinshed, this have suggested to Shakespeare the theme of the heroic warrior's contempt may for Christian meekness. Makdowald's taunt to Duncan resembles the speech of the usurper York to Henry VI in one of Shakespeare's first plays:
p. other passage
(Bullough,
That head
of thine
doth
not
become
a crown:
Thy
And
That Is
hand is
made to
grasp
a palmer's staff
Whose
frown, like
spear,
kill
and cure.
(2
As this
passage
suggests, the
contrast
contrast
between Duncan
and
lates
and
deepens the
Shakespeare drew between the saintly Henry VI Richard III in one of his earliest works (and his first study of
Macbeth harks back to the
result of the
The
outcome of
Wars
of
the Roses in
leaders in
England, culminating in the carnage created by Richard III, made possible the centralizing of the English monarchy under Henry VII and the Tudor dynasty.
Similarly
been
in Macbeth,
eliminated
by
the end of the play to give some plausibility to the idea that
Malcolm may
might explain
peacefully than his father did. Such considerations Shakespeare's dwelling on the moment when Malcolm attempts
reign more
followers:
"My
thanes and
kinsmen, / Henceforth be
nam'd"
earls, the
first that
of
ever
Scotland/ In
such an
honor
(V.ix.28-30). The
transformation
Scotland,
an attempt
barbaric
consortium of
feudal
chieftains
into
centralized
by
monarchy, in which all honors and titles now flow inducing his enemies to call in English aid from the
completed the process
of
saintly Edward, Macbeth may ironically have gospelling of the "English Scotland he
scorns.'4
the
Despite his
English
contempt
for the
overrefinement
epicures"
(V.iii.8), Macbeth
ends
up giving them
foothold in
the domes
Scotland. Malcolm
safe"
aid will
bring
about
are near at
hand / That
chambers will
be
(V.iv. 1-2),
of
Christianity
as
and he strongly associates the English forces with the power (IV.iii. 1 89-92). Though Malcolm begins the play just as depen on
dent
he
his father
shows signs of
help from his subordinates in warfare (I.ii. 3-5), by the end having learned from Duncan's mistakes. In particular, judg
with
ing by
scene
iii, he
evi-
294
Interpretation
has
outgrown
dendy
attitude.
Perhaps Malcolm is
and
Duncan
Macbeth
ene
a certain toughmindedness
from his
able
Nevertheless, in
worlds remains
acute.
Duncan
goes
blindly
to his
death,
of
never
peculiarity
his
situation.
his
speech when
he is
terrified
by
i'
his feast:
th'
shed ere
now,
olden
time,
and since too, murthers have been perform'd Too terrible for the ear. The time has been,
Ay,
That
when
the
an
brains
were
now
out, the
man would
die,
And there
end; but
they rise
again
on their crowns,
(III.iv.74-81)
The horror
contrast
of
of
the
between the
a
knowledges that
kind
of progress
(the "olden time") and the present moment. He ac has been made in Scotland, a process of
civilizing in
("humane
which
of
its
warriors
statute"
gentle weal").
what
not see
this
And
tion in Scotland
sibility
speech
of
is something specifically Christian: quite resurrection ("now they rise again"; see also
literally
III.iv.73 75).
In this
he is
dead, had
faced
the
Macbeth's
with
warrior
the
horizons
of
Christianity.16
He has
never
had
a problem
dealing face
to face with a
living human
opponent.
That is the
cannot
world:
sort of situation
with
he has been
trained to
handle
as a warrior.
What he
deal
is
some
kind
of supernatural
apparition,
What The
man
dare, I dare.
rugged
th'
Russian bear,
nerves
rhinoceros, or
and
Hyrcan tiger,
my firm
(ffl.iv.98-
102)
"A Soldier
Afeard"
and
295
Nothing
see
in
or of
frighten the
courageous warrior
Macbeth, but
something
forces that
appear to come
from
another world
terrify him,
although as we shall
they
also appear
to touch
into
being
deep
within
his
soul.
To be sure,
of
force
Christianity;
simply equate supernatural appari Senecan drama reminds us, ghosts are Though Shakespeare evidently
of worked
in
a pagan
framework
one
as well.
to reduce the element of the supernatural in his portrait of the early Roman
Republic in
Caesar
ghosts,
Coriolanus,
Republic
and
forces in Julius
Antony
they
are confronted
by
not
genuinely
shaken
by
the experience,
Shakespeare's Romans do
react with
Brutus'
Macbeth.
of
the ghost
Caesar is
representative:
Bru.
Art thou
devil,
stare?
That Ghost.
Bru.
mak'st
my blood cold,
and
my hair to
Speak to
Thy
evil
spirit, Brutus.
Why
To tell thee thou
com'st thou?
Ghost.
Bru.
shalt see me at
Philippi.
Ghost.
Bru.
Well; then I shall see thee again? Ay, at Philippi. Why, I will see thee at Philippi then. [Exit Ghost.]
Now I have taken heart thou
vanishest.
Ill spirit, I
would
hold
(IV.iii.279-88)
Though
at
first
quite
frightened is
by
quickly
see
pulls
"Why, I
will
thee at Philippi
Shakespeare's Romans
accept the
intrusion
of
lives,
possi
especially when this scene is contrasted with Macbeth's Banquo. Shakespeare was aware that the pagan world
to the ghost of
allowed
for the
bility
ing,
of the
supernatural,
but,
as
he shows,
the gulf
between the
paganism.
natural and
the
sharply drawn in
Strictly
speak
say that
paganism predates
full distinction
between the
god and
man,
Allowing for a continuum between intermediary figures such as heroes and daifrom
a
monia, paganism
does
not
human
realm
in the
radical
way that
Christianity does,
conception of
deity
and
hence its
sense of
man and
God. This
is admittedly a complicated issue, but with all the necessary qualifications be ing made, it is accurate to say that Christianity is distinctly more otherworldly
296
as
Interpretation
Macbeth
reacts more
violently to the
supernatural apparitions
cal
when
rift in his existence, marking a the brains were out, the man
not
would per
Macbeth is
the impact of
Christianity
to
of
on a man who
has been
used
thinking in
in
Of
all
Shakespeare's
tragedies, Macbeth is
most
which
supernatural
disturbing
effect.
The
subject gave
Shakespeare
happens to
his
narrow
horizons
and
into
Christian context,
its
radical
Ill
speeches
in Act III,
scene
iv, highlight
as
the peculiar
portrays
model of
fact
about
Mac
a courageous
man, he
is,
Shakespeare
him, remarkably
courage; no one
be braver
tormented
course of the
action, he the
is increas
his
ingly
by
doubts
fears.
Lady
Macbeth
states
paradox of
character
succinctly:
afeard?"
a soldier and
(Vi. 36-37).
ground, that
Though
basically
a stalwart
his feet
planted
firmly
on the
living
haunt his waking hours and in which "present fears / Are less than horrible
smother'd
in
leaving
him in
a confused state
imaginings,"
and what
"function / Is
(I.iii.137has"
in
surmise"
until a
world
for him
"nothing
earth
is / But
is
as
not"
42). Faced
with
where
"the
hath bubbles,
the water
experiences
the melting
existence.
by
how his
keep
Can
equilibrium:
be,
cloud,
make me strange
And
overcome us
like
Without
You
Even to the disposition that I owe, When now I think you can behold And
such
sights,
keep
When
mine
is blanch'd
with
fear.
(III.iv.109-15)
Perhaps
no character
in Shakespeare
girl"
undergoes a greater
transformation than
describes
as
"the
baby
manly hero to what he himself (Ill.iv. 105). This strange pattern results from
a
from
a pagan to a
Christian
cosmos.
"A Soldier
At the
Afeard"
and
297
in
beginning
of the
play Macbeth
appears to
be
Scotland. In the
cisely his
second
scene,
people are
pre
courage as a warrior:
For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name), Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Which
smok'd with
bloody
execution,
out
his
passage
hands,
nor
unseam'd
to
th'
chops,
battlements.
(I.ii.16-23)'8
Macbeth first
appears
of a
Homeric hero, cutting his way Scottish Achilles (the Homeric feel to
the passage).
and
In
our
first
glimpse of
Macbeth, he is hacking
meek
in half
is
mended
King
Duncan is
favorably
impressed
being by
and
com
Mac
beth's heroism, calling him "valiant cousin, worthy 19 (I.ii.24, 67). Later in the play, characters view Macbeth
Macbeth"
gentleman"
"noble
as a
bloody,
beginning
he is
praised
for the
same savage
long
as
they
are
directed
against
Scotland's
enemies.
on
This is the
violence,
it is
perceived as pp.
in the
and
service of p.
his
own
opposed to of
it (see Berger,
10-11,
what
especially
14). The
Act I,
scene
ii,
It involves
of the
original
epic
conflict,
one
might call
who
the Achilles-Agamemnon
weaker as a
king
is
military figure
great
But if Macbeth begins the play as a kind of Scottish Achilles, he certainly does not end that way. We cannot imagine Achilles plotting to murder Aga
he may want to kill the king, but he would do it openly. in secret Achilles is very cruel, but the Iliad builds up to the moment when he shows the hero compassion to Priam. The movement of Macbeth is just the reverse
memnon
becomes like be
crueller as
the play progresses. What accounts for this difference be Macbeth as heroes? I want to make what will at first sound
traced to the
extremely perverse argument, that the transformation of Macbeth is to Christianity.21 This point is to say the least counterin impact of
Christianity
ought to
savagery
of a
happening
and
in Scotland;
seems
have seen, it may explain Duncan's imprudent clemency to have provoked Macbeth's contempt for gospelling.
as we
298
Interpretation
now
But
am not
by
Christianity.
Rather I
Shakespeare is intrigued
by
in Macbeth:
his
martial
allows
it to be
redirected or reconstituted
in
a new
Christian
context.
very
much stays a
And
its premises, almost against soldier, Macbeth is not immune to the Christian he has
cannot remain true changed
he is secretly affected by it, secretly accepts his will. As much as he tries to remain the heroic
yet critique of
heroism
form.
and
hence
its
pure
Christianity
mo
his
view of
heroism, especially
when
pagan
ment
he
refuses
to kill
himself: is:
the
"Why
should
I play the Roman fool, and die / On mine taught Macbeth that the Romans were fools?
pellers.
sword?"
own
My
answer
The
principle of
Roman
honor is
life
and thus
in
kill himself
than live on in
pagan
transitory
value of
worldly honor
immortal soul. Macbeth is obviously not approaching the issue theologian, but the way he abjures suicide and desperately clings to life does suggest something in him opposed to pagan attitudes.
value of one's
as a
Christianity
is
contempt
for the
transitori-
a good
Christian, in
end
the way,
tries to remain
with a cant
loyal to the
to a
I am not saying that he for example, Duncan does. Rather he warrior's ethic, but he reinterprets that ethic
distinctly Christian inflection, though this obviously involves a signifi distortion of Christianity. Holinshed held out the prospect of a positive
"cruelty" "clemency"
Christian ethics, of combining and and thus moderating the bad effects of both. In the figure of Macbeth, Shake speare contemplates the demonic counterpart of this happy synthesis of pagan
synthesis of pagan and and
Christian,
heroic
warrior who
Absolute.22
of a
secularized
version of the
Christian
To clarify Macbeth's transformation of the heroic ideal, it is useful to con trast him with Achilles. Homer's hero is famous for having been confronted
with a
tragic choice
character
between
one.
His
is defined
long by his
but
obscure
life
and a
brief but
glorious and to
second
possibility,
many his decision has seemed to be the prototype of all tragic But what is characteristic of Macbeth is his refusal to be bound precisely by the terms of choice. Macbeth wants to have the best of both worlds; he
choices.23
Achilles'
obsessively pursues the goal of a long and glorious life. He is driven by the idea that any glory is worthless to him unless it can be prolonged, perhaps
posterity).
critique of pagan
This is the way Macbeth covertly accepts the heroism. For Christian thinkers, Achilles is the
at
"A Soldier
transitoriness.
cess as
thus"
Afeard"
and
299
suc
Macbeth
of
foolishness. At
the peak of
his
"To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely (HI.i.47 48). This line is profoundly characteristic of Macbeth and shows
King
Scotland, he
his peculiarity as a hero. He is an absolutist, with an all-or-nothing attitude; his achievement is worthless to him unless it is perfectly secure. Macbeth's scorn for the transitoriness of pagan values leads to a concern for safety that seems
unheroic ment of
by
One
cannot
his triumph
scorn
Hector: "To be
thus
mo
thus."
Achilles'
brand idea
beth
of
heroism. One
for his safety is the hallmark of his can find no better measure
of
of
almost
bourgeois
concern
achievement.24
nonheroic element
in Mac
is
somehow related
his
actions.
IV
We
impact
of
thinking in
the
famous opening
If it It
were
of
Duncan:
done,
when
well
were
done
quickly.
assassination
Could
trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here,
upon this
bank
and shoal of
time,
We'd
jump
the
life to
come.
(I.vii.1-7)
The
simple
suggests
scene
fact that Macbeth is thinking about the "life to immediately his difference from a pure pagan hero. As Shakespeare does in the key
come"
in
which
how the
expansion of
Hamlet is considering killing Claudius, the playwright indicates Christian horizons to include an afterlife changes the
action
terms of heroic
might
he
would
(see my Shakespeare: Hamlet, pp. 43-45). Someone object that Macbeth's point in this passage is precisely that
the life to
come,"
complaint about
life, he
long
for
the contraction of
dimen
only have to worry about what happens in this life. But the very fact that Macbeth wishes to exclude thoughts of the afterlife shows that Christianity has in fact altered his manner of thinking.
sions, so that he
would
Indeed,
no matter
how
unchristian
thinking in
this
processes
display
300
of
Interpretation
tries to analyze his situation with an unthinkingly plunging into action, he tortuous syntax of almost priestly dissection of motive and consequence. The If Macbeth is depths. its inward, opening up his speech reveals a mind
turning
an
Achilles, he is
aware of
an
Achilles
conscience.25
with a
As becomes
anguished reaction
to
having
of
murdered
human action,
though
he does
a That is why he strikes us as a more complex has created a division in his purely pagan hero. His exposure to Christianity act to him which makes it impossible for singlemindedly or to face the not act morally.
figure than
soul,
consequences of
his
actions without
of
Mac
beth
on
fighting flicting
hero, it
is
Instead, in Macbeth's
soliloquies
in Act I, Shakespeare
re
richly
developed
psychological
interior,
torn
by
con
impulses
and
struggling
may say
Whatever
gives
else one
about the
depth.26
impact
of
Christianity
on
the pagan
him
psychological
syntax of
Macbeth's
soliloquies give
and convoluted
a character that
in any of Shakespeare's Romans. Even as thoughtful a character as Brutus, who at first is clearly troubled by the prospect of killing Caesar, is not anguished by his decision to do so in the way that Macbeth reacts in roughly
lacking
similar circumstances.
To be sure, Brutus images himself as undergoing a psy trying to decide whether or not to kill Caesar (see Julius
Caesar, II.i.61-69), but he never experiences the kind of inner division that tears Macbeth apart. Indeed, once Brutus convinces himself that he is justified in killing Caesar, unlike Macbeth, he never once wavers in his resolve, nor does
he
suffer pangs of remorse or even regret after the able to
confront
deed.27
That is why,
as we
he does,
and
Macbeth is tormented
by his
of the
murdered
Duncan
by
contrast, Macbeth
his
own
deeply
divided
soul.
The
complexity introduced into Macbeth's situation by the conflict between pagan and Christian principles in his soul is what makes him a profoundly tragic figure. A purely
of pagan
Macbeth
might
king
without
all;
it is
Christianity
bad
were
in Macbeth that
conscience.
his
peculiar
done"
soliloquy,
Christianity
in
a subtle
has
given
him
new
desires
and
but
profound way.
Although Macbeth
to be rejecting
"the life to
come,"
what promises
Christianity
an
to
he is really doing is trying to gain here in this life what believers in the afterlife, a kind of absolute perfection,
reveals
what
infinite
what
satisfaction.
will call
As he first
for
the
Absolute Act,
end-all,"
"A Soldier
a single
Afeard"
and
301
deed that
will give
curely
and
forever.28
him everything he desires and give it to him se What gives him pause at this moment in Act I, scene vii, is human
act
consequences,
and
hence
a misdeed
well
Macbeth
would
have done
may come back to haunt its perpetrator. to heed his own warning, which turns out to
characterize
prophetically the
course of
his
career
in
crime.
But he
cannot close
his
eyes
to the
tantalizing
vision of the
will yield
him
com
happiness.
expectation of
desires,
the
only to have
of
since once
insecurity
as a
futility
of
his
quest on
Instead
and
focusing
for the Absolute Act; rather he tries to reformulate it. Duncan, now his thoughts dwell obsessively on Banquo,
he
piness
only obstacle standing between him and perfect is his rival general: "There is none but he / Whose being I do
concludes that the
hap
fear"
(III.i.53
death"
would
leave Macbeth
we can see
"perfect"
(III.i.107). In
his
succession,
Macbeth has
the
from Christianity. What troubles him is the thought that Banquo that he
content with would
Weird Sisters
promised cannot
found
"line
kings"
of
(III.i.59). Macbeth
tion of
be
having
achieved
his
personal ambi
becoming king
if it
now appears
Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be
wrench'd with an unlineal
hand,
No
If 't be so,
For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind, For them the gracious Duncan have I murther'd,
Put
rancors
in the
vessel of
my
peace
Only
To
for them,
jewel
man,
Given to the
common
enemy
of
make them
kings
the seeds of
Banquo kings!
(ffl.i.60-69)
In the
most unchristian act of
contemplating
another
by
he has
not
nal contempt
heirs,
for Christianity, the heroic warrior cannot resist thinking like a Chris tian in one decisive respect. Once he has been told of the immortality of the soul, he cannot help conceiving of the issue of his happiness differently from
the way a pagan hero like Achilles would. He comes to desire a perfection
unimaginable
to a
pagan
living
in
a world of
finite horizons.
Having
ertheless
feels that
failed to satisfy his infinite desire by killing Duncan, Macbeth nev perfection is still within his grasp. All he has to do now is to
together with
his
son
not reveal
302
the
Interpretation
extent of
full
Macbeth's hopes
until
the second
attempt at
goes awry.
When the
murderers are
forced to
report
that,
although
Banquo is
dead, Fleance
Then
comes
my fit
again.
I had
else
been perfect,
Whole But
as the marble,
founded
as the rock,
As broad
now
casing air;
am
To saucy doubts
fears.
(III.iv.20-24)
the most forceful expression of Macbeth's all-or-nothing He is constantly searching for a kind of pure perfection, an analogue to Christian salvation; in its absence, he feels himself left with nothing, in a kind
This
speech provides
attitude.
of
of
responsible
his despair. He desires something infinite ("as broad and general as the casing air"), but he discovers that every human act is finite, something is al
of
ways
provoke
further
up"
consequences.
Contrary
to Mac
all the consequences and forestall beth's hopes, no single act can "trammel the need for future action. Hence Macbeth's quest for perpetual satisfaction
only perpetual dissatisfaction. As his wife painfully sums up his tion: "Nought's had, all's spent, / Where our desire is got without
yields
situa
content"
(III.ii.4-5),
failure into
of
and she
correcdy diagnoses her husband's problem as an inability joy" (III.ii.7). Yet despite the mounting evidence of the
allows
his
quest
himself to be drawn
a series of
the end of
still
deeds that only succeed in damning him further. Even toward his life, when his world seems to be crashing down around him, he
some
kind
on one
gamble
now"
enduring happiness and is willing to risk everything to achieve perfection: "This push / Will cheer me ever, or
of
disseat This
(V.iii.20-21).29
analysis
sheds
light
on
what
speech, his
most
famous
To-morrow,
and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time;
And
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard Told
no more.
It is
a tale
by
an
idiot, full
nothing.
of sound and
fury,
(V.v. 19-28)
Signifying
"A Soldier
Struck
Afeard"
and
303
by
is
Given
what we
have
his all-or-nothing attitude, it is not surprising that the collapse for the Absolute Act should generate this glimpse into a nihilistic
of
his
abyss.
This
speech
again we
is surely not an expression of Christian sentiments, and yet once see how even in opposition to Christianity Macbeth turns out to be
influenced
by
it. When he
speaks of
"the last
time,"
syllable of recorded
he
clearly is no longer thinking in pagan terms, but is rather haunted by the lyptic expectations of Christianity. Indeed in its feeling for time, this
marks a
apoca speech
this world
from the
standpoint of
eternity.30
in Act V, scene v, is that he speaks of tomorrow and yesterday, but he has no thought for today. He has lost the pagan ability to take pleasure in the moment, to live happily in this world, without looking beyond its borders to eternity. This speech thus sums up all that What is
characteristic of
Macbeth's
words
Futurity has
his life,
behind ("what's done, is done"; HI.ii.12) and in driving him.31 The profoundest transformation in the process poisoning the present for the nature of Macbeth's heroism is his reorientation toward the future, brought
about stand of
by
the intervention of the Weird Sisters m his world, who in some way
of the supernatural on when we
human life
of
and
hence
the subversion
the natural.
Recall that
first hear
"Disdaining
ious to the
Fortune"
(I.ii. 17). Like any good pagan warrior, at first he is not future but fights for the glory of the present moment, obliv
consequences
for his
safety.
But
may be some providential order to events his faith in himself and in his own efforts, himself to
whatever
suggesting to Macbeth that there in this world, the Weird Sisters shake
by
and awaken
his
longing
see
to ally
force in the
picks
Lady
192.):
Macbeth quickly
up the
Mack,
p.
Thy
letters have
transported me
and
beyond
now
I feel
(I.v.56-58)
to the transformation of Macbeth's sense of time: the present
contemptible whenever one
Here is the
moment
key
becomes
to a
it
con
fidently
perfect
future. Drawn
inexorably into
future, Macbeth
one all
eventu
ally life can be lived only in the present, this means that life itself loses and the "poor His contempt for the "brief for
Macbeth.32
candle"
basic
sense
meaning
who
player"
304
Interpretation
more"
is merely "stmts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no one last reflection of the disdain for the transitory he has absorbed from Chris
tianity.
a
Ultimately
of religious an
Shakespeare
shows that
Macbeth's
nihilism
is the
obverse of
kind
faith;
this
world
becomes
worthless
to him when it
fails to
live up to
otherworldly
To
fully
how Macbeth
comes
to be governed
by
demonic
anti-
faith, parody play. Of course, on the face of it, as witches, they Christian force within the world of Macbeth. But
darkness"
appear to represent an
although as
"instruments
of
witches must
be
they in
effect
instruct Macbeth
are at
least in
one
witches teach
Mac
beth is
lesson in
providence.
The
providential order
they
represent
may be demonic
their prophecies
lead Macbeth to his damnation, but the fact remains that embody for Macbeth a form of religious teaching, that earthly
and
by
higher
powers.
of
their specific
in Macbeth's
as
case suggests to
is
governed
by
providence,
rather
than
by
a gen
eral
providence, as is
we
more typical of
As
warrior
whether on the
have seen, Macbeth begins the play with the faith of a Homeric he succeeds in battle depends largely on whether he behaves battlefield. But the Weird Sisters his
actions
undermine
bravely
Macbeth's belief
lies in his
own
hands
and teach
him instead to
rely on supernatural aid. As the play unfolds, Macbeth becomes increasingly hesitant to take the risks a hero normally accepts as a matter of course, and instead seeks guarantees from the witches that his success is assured because it
is foreordained. One
self-reliance
to a faith in a providential order would lead him to act more virtuously in conventional moral ter But in the paradoxical world of Macbeth, the hero's
newfound
long
eral
as
providence actually makes him crueller in his actions. As Macbeth believes that the outcome of single combat is a function
faith in
chiefly league
evil
of
the
behavior he
of
by
the gen
admiration
with
initially
But
once act
of good will
proxies,
himself, concealing his (I.vii.82), working through they least expect it, rather than in
secretly
honest ries
Moreover,
are
fated, he loses
his goals,
achieve
including
comes to believe that his victo becomes willing to do anything to murdering women and children. Macbeth develops
Macbeth
"A Soldier
a
Afeard"
and
305
kind he
of
fanaticism; he becomes
so convinced
that he
is favored
by
providence
that
comes
universal
(Ill.iv. 134-35).
Thus in line
Sisters,
who seem
to
Macbeth, in fact take away whatever power he originally turn him into a creature of their own ends. He thinks that provi
to
dence is serving him, but in reality he ends up serving providence, or at least whatever order the witches represent. Macbeth's loss of freedom is reflected in
the
diminishing
of
proportion of thought to
play.33
deed that
at
characterizes
his behavior in
As
we
have seen,
first
deepening
Macbeth's
consciousness occurs.
he begins to behave
differently
than a pagan
decision to kill Duncan, running over in his mind all the moral objections to the deed. Speaking of meekness and pity with respect (I. vii. 16-25), Macbeth
comes closest to
once
espousing genuine Christian principles in this speech. Even he has killed Duncan, Macbeth cannot rest content with the deed or put it his
mind.
out of
he is clearly troubled
Although it may be inaccurate to speak of remorse in his case, by what he has done and convinced that he will never
(Il.ii.38 40).
The way his conscience plays tricks on hear voices, is one more indication of his transformation from a purely pagan hero. His behavior provokes a reproach from his wife, who would like to see him act like an oldstyle warrior again: "You do unbend your noble strength, to think / So brain-sickly of sleep peacefully again him, making him see visions
and
things"
(II.ii.42-43).
But the
close
new
interiority
that has
opened
down
under
beth
murdering Banquo. Shakespeare again gives Mac the before deed, in which he reflects on why he must do long soliloquy been it. And once Banquo has killed, Macbeth's conscience wreaks havoc with
is faced
a
his
peace of
mind, perhaps even producing the apparitions that haunt his ban
once again tries to restore
quet.
Lady
Macbeth
his heroic
attitude
by
shaming
atti
him: "What?
quite unmann'd
in
folly?"
subtle variations
into Macbeth's
second
how his
murder of
they discussed
the night
indicates that they will be going before. It is thus clear that even before the
the decision to kill Banquo. Unlike
reached
case of Duncan, this time Macbeth's soliloquy merely he has already made. Furthermore, his decision to hire mur derers to kill Banquo suggests that he is trying to distance himself from the
happened in the
confirms a choice
deed
fits
the
of conscience
his
murder of
Duncan
provoked
(unsuccessfully
scruples
it turns
out).
Macbeth
seems to
of
that go along
with
opening up
306
Interpretation
scene
banquet
affairs,
confirms, the
warrior wishes
he
could return
to an
earlier state of
when
he
by
the prickings
of conscience.
Thus
at the end of
Ill.iv, Macbeth
proclaims:
Which
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand, must be acted ere they may be scann'd.
(Ill.iv. 138-39)
Here
we see
Macbeth
provoked
into
a willful contraction of
his
consciousness.
Up
to this point
he has been
characterized
by
he
his deeds before acting (at least unusual for a warrior). Now he wishes to reverse this pattern: act first and then think about it. The new principle of
gives to
interiority
he
now
in his
soul
wishes to escape.
has clearly become painful to him, a burden from which But the price Macbeth pays for this escape is his
freedom.
Reacting
agonizing thought
processes that
brutally deliberating at
he
reacts
than ever
length
about
before. The very fact that up to this point his deeds indicates that he has been he
allows
act or not.
point on,
automatically to events, rather than planning them, thus gradually surrendering his freedom of action. When Macbeth is shaken by the news that Macduff has fled to England, he
which
in
conceives the
idea
of what would
today be
Time,
The
flighty
is
o'ertook
This
there
attitude
is the
result of the
Weird
are
Sisters'
success
in
increasingly
convinc
ing Macbeth
is
rather what
that events
in life
to
fated. If his
what
no point
one
in Macbeth
debating
try
to
destiny
his
task
becomes
figure out,
with
is fated to happen
certain
will
have tion,
knowledge
of the
future, he
thinks that
haste,
and not
due delibera
be the
key
to
his
success:
From this moment The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand. And even now, To
crown
The
castle of
upon
and
done:
Seize
Fife,
give to
th'
o'
th'
edge
sword
"A Soldier
His wife, his babes,
and all unfortunate souls
Afeard"
and
307
That trace him in his line. No This deed I'll do before this But
no more sights!
boasting
like
fool;
purpose cool.
(IV.i. 146-55)
After
debating
at
length
killing
both Duncan
and
plunges nant
precipitately into several murders, all of them crueller and more repug morally than his earlier deeds. But having had enough of moral scruples,
goes to
Macbeth One
But
which
in this
case
be tempted to
view
this
development
impulsiveness,
lurking
"To
behind this
crown
is
model
that cannot
be traced to
pagan
sources.
my thoughts
speech
dream
of
example,
Kirsch,
pp.
94-95,
and
Turner,
138). He fantasizes
he
need
only think something and it will instantaneously happen, a pattern fully embod ied only in the biblical God. Just as he has been attracted to the Christian idea
of
eternity, Macbeth feels the pull of the Christian idea thoughts translate
of an omnipotent
God,
whose
directly
into
actions.
As
part of
the absolutism we
have
for himself.
goes
in Macbeth, he now covets the omnipotence of the biblical God Reacting against his discovery of his vulnerability as a mortal, he to the opposite extreme of wishing to believe himself invulnerable, which
observed
witches'
is
him prey to the schemes. Once he places himself en in their he is able to overcome his unheroic sense of insecurity and hands, tirely in fact develops a remarkable faith in himself as unconquerable. Toward the end
what makes
of
the play, in
a reversal of
the way he
is
portrayed
begins to
conventionally heroic again: "The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear, / Shall never sag with doubt, nor shake with (V.iii.9-10); he fears" (V.v.9). But the irony is actually says: "I have almost forgot the taste of
sound
that Macbeth's sense of absolute power comes just before his experience of
powerlessness.34
absolute control of
Seeking
he in fact
initiative, quickly loses while he is reduced to waiting passively and reacting to their moves, precisely prophecies (V.iii.2-7). In the end, he even because of his faith in the
enemies seize the
witches'
events, forced to
his
of movement:
"They have
fly, /
must
fight
course"
the
scene
speech
in Act IV,
of
i, indicates, Macbeth
sights,"
repudiates
thinking
to
contemplate
that is, he does not want avoiding "more of his deeds. Thus his speech fulfills a consequences
wife express earlier
wish that
without
both he
his
seeing, that
is,
without
having
to
308
Interpretation
But the
ultimate realization of this
deeds.35
hope is
Lady
Macbeth's
sleepwalk
watching!"
ing: "to
receive at once
(V.i.9-11). In
her husband's
Lady
case.
Macbeth
literalized
what
happens metaphorically in
He
comes
to
sleepwalk
through
life, going
through the
provoked
by
his
opponents'
moves and
own eyes.
The
ultimate
Macbeth's
is
paradoxical
it leads him to
mechanically,
without consciousness.
As
we
beth's
consciousness causes a
what
have repeatedly seen, the opening up of Mac deep rift to develop in his soul, a painful division
between
in the
he
wants to
do
and what
his
conscience
tells
to do. Though
end
for
much of
the play he
wrestles with
his
newfound
he
starts
consciousness.
Troubled
by
what
he
his
soul
"full
of scorpions
is my
mind"
(IH.ii.36)
for
way to heal the rift in his consciousness and "raze out brain" (Viii.42). But in seeking to extinguish con
unconscious
which
him
act more
Chafing
under
the con
all restraints on
his actions,
newfound
becomes
a slave to
a new
VI
In examining the impact of the Weird Sisters on Macbeth's thinking, we have seen what he dimly suspects from the beginning and finally confirms to his horror himself
their effect
is thoroughly
As Macbeth
good"
says:
"This
supernatural
(I.iii. 130-31). It is
the
of course
soliciting / Cannot be ill; cannot be notoriously difficult to pin down the exact role
opponents of the
of
legitimate Christian
forces in
Scotland,
in many
are
as was of course
historically
respects
leading
of
Macbeth
impact
providence.
Ultimately it
or
is
as
difficult to
as
the Christian
camp
it is to
place
Macbeth. As
strange
hybrid,
neither
fully
pagan nor
fully Christian,
worlds, combining
Christianity does not, as it usually does, temper the fierceness of the pagan spirit, but paradoxically inflames it. Supplying an absolutism to Macbeth's pagan spirit,
or rather
aspects of
Christianity
of
it
turns
him into
"A Soldier
devious figure. Convinced
stand
Afeard"
and
309
of the inevitability of his triumph, he lets nothing in his way, becoming a demonic parody of the crusading Christian war rior and hence a fiend in the eyes of the genuine Christians in the play. One might
of classical and
Christian
duce
some
kind
of
higher synthesis,
temp'
suggests the
the best of
both
worlds.
But
antithetical qualities:
be wise, amaz'd, rate, and furious, / Loyal, and neutral in a (Il.iii. 108-9). If Macbeth achieves a kind of synthesis, he might be both worlds, pursuing pagan goals with a Christian or, alternatively phrased, pursuing Christian goals with a pagan
worst of
said
to combine the
absolutism
ferocity.36
The
witches are
similarly
hybrids, walking
violations of
may
seem
good
versus
evil, Christian
and so on.
pagan,
male
versus
female,
supernatural
versus
natural,
fair"
witches work to
break
down any simple sense of binary opposition in the play: "Fair is foul, and foul (Li. 11). The way they violate fundamental category distinctions is the is inhabitants first thing Banquo notices about them: they "look not like seem witches to cloud the (I.iii.41-42). Above the all, earth, / And yet are normally clear distinction between male and female:
on't"
th'
o'
th'
You
And That
yet your
should
be women,
beards forbid
me
to interpret
(I.iii.45-47)
The
masculine-feminine
dichotomy
with
because it becomes
aligned
is unusually important in Macbeth, in part the pagan-Christian opposition. The pagan in battle,
while
heroic ideal is
Christianity
is
associated with a
worries
softer, sensitive,
more
feminine
view of
beth
have they have become too feminized. As we have seen, the fact that they reply, "We are men, my (III.i.90) shows that they are aware that Macbeth is calling their manliness into question.
questioned whether
The issue
of what
it is to be
a man
is
raised
frequently
in Macbeth
whether
it involves acting solely like a male, tme to the warrior's code of aggressive behavior, or whether the notion of manhood needs to be extended to encompass
a
feminine,
sensitive side of
human
nature.
(For
a thorough
able
discussion
of
this
see Jose Benardete's essay.) Lady into murdering Duncan early in the play
issue,
Macbeth is
to taunt her
a
husband
by
59),
thus
treating him
as
with contempt
appealing to for
narrowly
masculine
compassion (I.vii.39-
murderers of
310
Interpretation
play,
end of the
Malcolm tries similarly to goad Macduff into savage warrior stands up for a broader definition of manhood as com
when
humanity:
Malcolm. Macduff.
Dispute it like
a man.
shall
do so;
But I
must also
feel it
as a man.
(IV.iii.220-21)
Passages
nine
idea
of
how
complicated
the masculine/femi
dichotomy becomes in Macbeth. Far from constituting a simple, straight forward opposition in the play, the boundary between male and female is
always on the verge of
of
dissolving, creating
as a warrior
new
of
the signs
is the degree to
he
allows
him his
self to
by female forces,
in
the Weird
Sisters,
determining
his
course of
also
even as mas
the masculine is
culinized.
feminized in the play, the feminine is This tendency is evident in the beards of the witches,
being
being
or
in
Lady
her
Macbeth's
to act the
part of a
male,
most
fully
demonstrated in
her famous
soft
in
which she
desires to be
"unsexed"
and to exchange
femininity
for
a cruel
masculinity (I.v.40-50). One cannot simply equate the pagan in Macbeth or the feminine with the Christian.
Nevertheless, the repeated images in the play of hybrids of masculinity and feminity, most fully realized in the imaging of the Weird Sisters, suggest the
larger
point
portray
a world that
attempt
in Macbeth to
elements.
vn
Sisters'
One final
considered:
aspect of the
Weird
impact
on
Macbeth
remains to
be
the way
they
change
his
view of nature.
world of what
Lady
Macbeth
calls
"metaphysical
aid"
develop
In part, this development reflects the fact that Macbeth's desire for the infinite leads him to despise anything merely finite in
world of nature.
lishes
hence ultimately the natural world itself.37 Shakespeare estab connection between Macbeth's desire for the infinite and his tyrannical
between Malcolm and Macduff concerning the character of the tyrant, infinite desire emerges as his distinguishing trait: "Boundless intemperance / In nature is a (IV.iii.66-67). Mac
nature.
In the
long
exchange
tyranny"
Testing
duff
by
rice,"
pretending to be a tyrant, Malcolm accuses himself of "stanchless indeed an insatiable desire for wealth: "my more-having would be
ava
as a
"A Soldier
sauce as
Afeard"
and
311
/ To
make me
hunger
more"
(IV.iii.78, 81-82). He
would
also presents
himself
lecherous,
his lust
brook
no restraints:
but there's
no
bottom,
none,
In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters, Your matrons, and your maids could not fill up The cestem of my lust, and my desire All
continent
impediments
my
will.
would o'erbear
That did
oppose
(TV.iii.60-65)
As Shakespeare
presents the tyrannical
set
makes
him
fight
have
against
any limits
to his
itself,
since
Thus the tyrant ultimately finds himself the very idea of a natural order is that things
will.38
natures that
Macbeth
dead"
seems
define how they behave, that is, set limits to their actions. characteristically to long for the moment when "Nature seems
deeper
and
(II.i.50).
plunges
As Macbeth
titanic
"For
egotism that
deeper into tyranny, Shakespeare reveals the actions: "But let the frame of things dis
will eat our meal
way"
joint, both
in
fear"
(III.ii.16-17);
(Ill.iv. 134-35).
Ultimately
Macbeth's tyrannical
even
leads him to
forces
of nature and
the natural
order
itself:
let them fight
waves
Though
Against the churches; though the yesty Confound and swallow navigation up; Though the bladed Though Though
castles com
be lodg'd, do
and trees
blown down;
topple on their
warders'
heads;
slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure Of nature's germains tumble all together, Even till destruction sicken;
answer me
To
what
ask you.
(IV.i.52-61)
This
and
passage provides a profound
character of
Macbeth's
soul of
his
tyrannical
to
picturing the
dissolution
in nature, and that means particularly the dissolution of all natural boundaries. What Macbeth's tyrannical soul cannot stand is the limits nature
all order sets
rather see
the
world
in
his
will.
Ultimately
he
rejects
human
notion
will.
be any kind of order subsisting in nature, independent of That explains his attraction to the idea of a supernatural order, the in the
world
is
always
even
312
if it it
Interpretation
must
be
a sinister one.
The
more
with supernatural
forces,
as
he is to look down
own
justifiably
to his
purposes alone.
Perhaps the
ture's
most
striking feature
of
Macbeth's
speech
is his
curse on
"na
germains,"
the seeds
despises the
out
generative power of
Ultimately
that
Macbeth turns
most
to be at war
It is
no accident
his
horrible
crime
is
the murder of
Macduff's
a profound
irony
pears
in Macbeth's
to be
Scotland
own marriage
barren,
thus
leaving
him
without
ap his
line
of
and
hence his
achievement.
dispense
generate an
unnaturally tries to deny her role as a woman a kind of curse on her natural potential as a mother (I.vii.54-59). Shakespeare
seems to
be establishing
live
to regret
it, for
revenge.
Having
tried to
deny
Lady
unequal
to the
aggressively masculine role she tries to play and her mind snaps in the process. In Act V, Shakespeare brings in a Doctor of Physic to treat Lady Macbeth.
Perhaps he
nature was aware
word
for
for
generative power).
perturbation
Lady
Macbeth's
"a
great
(V.i.9)
and supplies a
beth
and
his
wife:
troubles"
(V.i.71-72).
The doctor
can
suggests
now
that,
having
Lady
she cure
be helped
than the
physician"
only by supernatural forces: "More needs (V.i.74). Faced with the doctor's failure to
contempt
all
the
divine
Macbeth
none of
expresses
his
for
medicine:
"Throw
physic
it"
(V.iii.47). For
Shakespeare's is
supposed
lack
of classical
learning,
Macbeth's
that
whole career as a
tyrant.
And
in his
out
supernatural,
Macbeth turns
confusion
in
order
be profoundly confused. The Weird Sisters prey upon his to instill a false sense of security in him and lead him to his
to
prophecies with which
destruction. The
confidence
riddling
only because
of
his
lingering faith
can
in the
The
Macbeth
be
overthrown
of woman.
order, such
him"
as a man not
bom
that
he
cannot
wood to
Shall
come against
(IV.i.92-94), his
reaction
depends
limits
"A Soldier
That Who
can
will never
Afeard"
and
-313
be.
impress the forest, bid the tree Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements!
Rebellious dead, rise never till the wood Of Bimam rise, and our high-plac'd Macbeth
Shall live the lease
of nature.
good!
(IV.i.94-99)
We
and
see
here how truly egotistical Macbeth has become. He expects everybody everything to be bound by the order of nature with one exception: Macbeth
himself (On this point, see Davis, p. 226.). As the last line in the passage shows, he is relying on the power of nature at just the moment when he con
ceives
himself
as
raised above
it. To
see
become,
one need
only
note
tion that only two scenes earlier he himself had contemplated. Macbeth has
become totally
world.
confused
Having demanded
end
in sorting out the natural and the supernatural in his to be above the limits of nature himself, he forgets
In the
conclusion
destroy Macbeth,
supernatural aura.
even
though the
prophecies
The
suggest that
in the
not
event the
explanations.39
of woman turns out to be simply the product of a Caesarean section. And the miraculously moving forest turns out to be nothing more than a camou flaging maneuver. Having attacked the natural order, Macbeth finds himself
bom
ultimately defeated by it. And the deepest irony is that the Weird Sisters did not in fact conceal his fate from him. As several critics have noted, the prophetic
apparitions come with their own
man not
explanations.40
bom
of woman
is delivered
by
is delivered
by
a child with
tree in his
hand, suggesting
Malcolm's later
stratagem.
look carefully enough at what the Weird what show he listens to he hears and interprets the proph Sisters him; only ecies in light of his own desires, abbve all, his wish to be invulnerable and
Macbeth's
problem
is that he does
omnipotent.
when
Macbeth
o'
dagger, he
the
says:
rest"
"Mine
fools
th'
senses, / Or
forms
eyes
an
im
in
the play.
his
in this
scene, he
might
have been
destruction. His
witches'
apparitions
strongly that he
own
off
trusting
tricked
what
he
saw with
his
eyes,
rather
than allowing
himself to be
and
into
interpreting
the revelations
in light
of
his
own
hopes
desires.
314
The
Interpretation
ultimate
is to
make
him think he is
seeing with his own eyes when in fact he is interpreting what he sees in light of what he hears from the witches and their apparitions. As Macbeth finally comes
ear"
"keep
(Vviii.21);
between
might sum nite
perhaps
the
ultimate
lesson Macbeth
one's
to learn
is the difference
hearsay
and
and
seeing
with
up the Weird
Sisters'
strategy this
desire
in him. Thus
they
nature,
which
No interpretation
fully
adequate
doxes
of
show
Macbeth,
the
many riddles that have puzzled critics of the play, can in part be traced to the peculiar situation of its hero. Macbeth is in the odd position of a heroic warrior
whose ambitions
have been
him
by
values, Macbeth
and all of
longer
settle
glory
that satisfied
Achilles
idea
some
in his life, something absolutely secure and absolutely lasting. Transposed into a world with the expanded horizons of Christianity, he finds a desire for the infinite awakening within his soul, which Shakespeare links with
thing
absolute
Macbeth's human
new
form
of
tyranny
and
his
new attitude
will.
If
one were
to analyze
fully
Shakespeare's
mation of was
the
pagan
of
infinite desire,
prophetically
looking
prefigures the
tragedy
of modernity.
future; the tragedy of the Scottish warrior Indeed, if Macbeth could have found a way
on earth
into
a political
program, into
ideology, he
might well
have
served as
the prototype of
the
distinctively
modem
NOTES
1. All quotations from Shakespeare are taken from G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). The original version of this essay was given as a lecture at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation in Munich on November 28, 1991. An ex "Macbeth" panded version was published in German translation under the title und die Evangelisierung
edited
by Anke Heimann and opportunity to lecture in Munich and for the original publication of this Macbeth essay in book form. I have used this opportunity to update the scholarship, although I have been able to take into account only a fraction of the work on Macbeth that has appeared since I first formulated my interpretation of the play. I have substan
by
Heinrich Meier). I
want
von
Schottland
by
the Siemens Foundation in 1993 (translated to thank Dr. Meier for the
tially
revised
the text based on criticism I received of the earlier version and my own
rethinking
of
"A Soldier
2.
Afeard"
and
315
all of
According
an
of
in
Shakespeare.
3. For
insightful discussion
Words,"
of
Macbeth,
see
Jos6 A. Benardete,
of manliness
"Macbeth's Last
Interpretation,
another good
discussion
in Macbeth, see Matthew N. Proser, The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean Tragedies G'nnceton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 51-91. On the distinction between aner and anthropos, see Iliad," Seth Benardete, "Achilles and the Hermes, 91 (1963): 1-5. 4. On this point,
see
and
and
Impotence in Shakespeare's
Macbeth,'"
in
taken
directly
from Shakespeare's
source
Chronicles;
see
Geof Kegan
Inter
frey Bullough,
Paul, 1973),
6. For
Narrative
vol.
7,
p.
Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge 490 (all references to Bullough will be to vol. 7).
and
see
and
a similar
analysis,
Mystery
Play,"
pretation, 16 (1989): 351. The best attempt I have seen to characterize the Scotland
of
Macbeth is
by
Wilbur Sanders in
and
Sanders
and
an imaginative essay entitled "Macbeth: What's Done, Is in Wilbur Howard Jacobson, Shakespeare's Magnanimity: Four Tragic Heroes, Their Friends Families OLondon: Chatto & Windus, 1978); see especially pp. 59-65.
Done,"
Erring
Barbarian
and
Among
the Supersubtle
Venetians,"
Southwest Re
300-301,
speaks of
warlike
(Bullough,
At
p.
490). Holinshed
one point
lingering
in
most speedie
valiant capteine:
delaies apart, and began to assemble an armie for oftentimes it happeneth, that a dull coward
....
and slouthfull
person, constreined
by
the
king
himselfe
critics to
governed
in the
maine
battell
or middle
Q3ullough,
p.
492).
See Sanders, Shakespeare's Magnanimity, p. 65. For an incisive critique of the tendency of idealize Duncan as a perfect ruler, see Harry Berger, Jr., "The Early Scenes of Macbeth:
a
Preface to
ELH, 47 (1980): 1-31. For further analysis of Duncan's problems king, see Graham Bradshaw, Shakespeare's Skepticism (Brighton, UK: Harvester in Graham Press, 1987), pp. 244-49, and John Turner, "The Tragic Romances of Holderness, Nick Potter, and John Turner, Shakespeare: The Play of History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987), pp. 130-31, 137. 10. On Scotland as an elective monarchy, see H.iv.29-32 and Nicholas Brooke, ed., Macbeth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 74. On the complicated matter of the historical details of the principle of succession in Scotland, see Bullough, pp. 431-32. For a contrary view of Duncan's policy, see Lowenthal, pp. 321-23. Turner, pp. 125-31, also develops a positive view of
and weakness as a
Feudalism,"
New
Interpretation,"
Duncan's kingship.
11. For
a good
discussion
of this
passage,
see
Lowenthal,
p.
331.
12. Although clearly Shakespeare derived his sense of Macbeth's cruelty from Holinshed, the idea of giving it a specifically ant-Christian inflection seems to be Shakespeare's own. At one point in Holinshed's young
men account of
Macbeth, he
writes that
"he
also applied
men of
his
whole
indevor,
from
to cause
(Bullough,
pp.
of ten years
during
which
ruled
Scotland
justly
and
well,
the story Shakespeare chose to suppress. In general, Shakespeare found a confused mixture
Christian
elements
in Holinshed's
account of
Macbeth
and
Scotland;
plays
the playwright
to sharpen and
develop
the contrast.
13. Macbeth
siders
also appears to
be returning to Shakespeare's
Henry
VI
in the way it
con
the influence of women on politics, and especially the question of witches, as originally
embodied
in the figure
point
of
Joan de Pucelle.
is
suggested
by
a passage
sources
in Hector
Boetius'
be
one of
Shakespeare's
for Macbeth,
since
316
his
Interpretation
of
history
Scots
as
they
imitate the English, specifically in their handling of aristocratic titles: "Furthermore as men walking in the right path, we began to follow also the vaine shadow of the Germane honor
titles of nobilitie, and
boasting
out yer
long,
not
that whereas
and
he in times
honorable,
now
in riches
he
be taken
that went
loaden
titles,
whereof which
it
came
dukes,
. .
earles, some
lords,
was
barons, in
vaine puffes
they fixed
all
Scotland
were of one
condition, &
called
by
the name of
Thanes
and
this
denomination
land, Scotland
p.
and
See Vernon Snow, ed., Holinshed's Chronicles: Eng Ireland (reprinted New York: AMS, 1965; London: J. Johnson, 1807-8), vol. 5, desert
and
of
merit."
26. For
discussion
in Boetius
colm's
sheds a new
light
the
end of
Turner, pp. 123-24. As Turner points out, this passage Macbeth, suggesting something negative about Mal
Boetius'
Description may have contrib renaming of the Scottish thanes as earls. In general, uted to Shakespeare's fundamental conception in Macbeth. As if he were a sixteenth-century Walter Scott, Boetius contrasts a primitive and barbaric but austere and heroic Scotland with a civilized but
overrefined and effete of a
and sophisticated
England. Turner,
p.
143, aptly
that
characterizes
Macbeth
as
heroic
age."
15. In
and
late
exchange with
he is
at
least
aware of what a
"mercy"
king
must
possess, in
particular a synthesis of of
"fortitude."
with
and
Mal
colm's role
in
a
Lowenthal,
pp.
353-54,
Turner,
pp.
144-45.
he does
understand,"
16. For
discussion
of
unnerved
Man,"
by
what
not
see
Howard B. White, "Macbeth and the Tyrannical Interpretation, 2 (1971): 149. 17. For a fuller discussion of this point, see my Shakespeare's Rome: Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976), pp. 142-45.
and
Empire
rhetoric"
lightness
peculiar
conscience,"
of
and
Bradshaw, pp. 219-20, and Davis, pp. 219, 223. Bullough, p. 426. On the importance of Macbeth's "pagan see Wilbur Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 297. The
of this passage, see of
I.ii,
see
Banquo "meant to
anti-Christian
Golgotha"
in this
ac
(I.ii.39-40)
lends
strangely
see
aspect, to this
Macbeth,"
Kenyon Review,
possible
implications
Golgotha reference,
see
see also
Berger,
p.
insightful
analysis of
Duncan's
Macbeth,
Bradshaw,
p.
221.
and
a general discussion of this theme in epic literature, see W. T. H. Jackson, The Hero King: An Epic Theme (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). That Shakespeare may indeed have had Agamemnon specifically in mind when writing Macbeth is suggested by the fact that critics have found a number of verbal echoes in the play of John Studley's 1566 English
20. For
the
translation of Seneca's
Agamemnon. See Bullough, p. 452: "This tragedy of Seneca's seems espe imagination." The most remarkable of these verbal parallels cially to have seized on Shakespeare's can be found in the Act I Chorus of Studley's Agamemnon: "One hurlye burlye done, another doth
begin"
(Bullough,
p.
523;
cf.
Macbeth, I.i.3).
formulation: "It is (p. 348).
parallel
tyranny"
disconcerting to
realize that
Macbeth's Christian
worsen
his
simply
especially the Crusades, shows that Christianity is may in fact be combined with it. Shakespeare
motives
explores
in
V.
which religion
may supply
for
warfare
throughout his
plays, especially in
ton:
history
Henry
23. See, for example, David Lenson, Princeton University Press, 1975). 24. The
contrast
Achilles'
Tragedy
the
Prince
between Macbeth
in the
and
and
Achilles may
be blurred
appearance
in the
by
Greek hero's
underworld
Odyssey,
between
pagan
thisworldliness
Christian
otherworldliness.
But
the point of
"A Soldier
tion of the underworld in the
Afeard"
and
317
may be in Homer is
a pale shadow of
being desirable,
would rather
the afterlife
is precisely its attenuated character. Whatever afterlife there life, not a higher state as in the Christian vision. Far from in the Odyssey is so close to nonexistence that Achilles says that he
Odyssey
this
a slave on earth than rule in the underworld. As case shows, unlike the Christian hero, the pagan hero does not take his bearings from the afterlife. When in this life, the Christian hero thinks longingly ahead to the afterlife; even when in the afterlife, the pagan hero
be
Achilles'
thinks
in Sylvan Barnet, ed., Macbeth (New York: New American Library, 1963), p. 229: "A commonplace man who talks in commonplaces, a golfer, one might guess, on the Scottish fairways, Macbeth is the only Shakespeare hero who corresponds to a bourgeois type: a murderous Babbitt, let us Originally appearing in Harper's Magazine (June,
say."
Cf.
Macbeth,"
1962),
loses
interesting
sight of
the heroic
dimension
moral
terrifying
warrior
but
intensely
imagination"
(p. 250).
Macbeth
sense of
26. Cf. Bradshaw, p. 252: "The 'Christian', decidedly unclassical and unSenecan, character of appears in its terrors, rather than in certitudes or assurances, and corresponds with that die Cf.
psyche as also p.
gustine."
something stratified, vertiginous, which [Erich] Auerbach analyses in Au 255: "Shakespeare has sunk himself into the mindfalls of Macbeth's
.
anguished
imagination.
and
We
are
intimately
difference
Macbeth's thought
classical and
feeling;
the
and that
Christian
can
feeling."
modes of
27. One
soliloquies.
and
Brutus simply in the opening of their "It must be by his (Il.i. 10),
death"
Macbeth
immediately
/ It
were
done,
when
'twere
well
done
Shakespeare's Romans
soliloquies
and
(I.vii.1-2). In these lines, one can hear the difference between his Christians just in the syntax. I discuss the distinctive nature of the in Shakespeare's Rome,
of pp.
in the Roman
plays
113-16.
28. Cf. Maynard Mack's formulation in Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Tragedies (Lincoln:
make
Chiefly
time."
on
the
University
wrench
hereafter now, to
Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 194: "Macbeth and his the future into the present by main force, to master
seen of this pattern
wife seek to
Tragedy
and the
Renaissance,"
Terence Eagleton, Shakespeare and Society: Critical Studies in Shakespearean Drama (New York: Shocken, 1967), pp. 130-32. The use of the term Absolute may sound anachronistic in a discussion
of
Shakespeare,
as
if he
were some
kind
of
use the
(I.iv.14, HI.vi.40, IV.iii.38), and with something of the force in German Idealism. Indeed, much of what I am arguing about Macbeth is
it
portrays
times in Macbeth
in the
movement
between "absolute
trust"
(I.iv.14)
and
"absolute
fear"
in Act HJ,
a
scene
iv,
offers an
God, I
could
be bounded in
interesting parallel to Hamlet's lines: "O king of infinite space were it not that I
and
dreams"
(II.ii.254 56).
As different
aS
Hamlet
share
the
all-
attitude of
I have been discussing. See my Hamlet book, pp. 50-52. For a parallels between Hamlet and Macbeth, see Harold C. Goddard, The
provocative
Shakespeare (Chicago:
expressed
University
of^Chicago
Press, 1951),
vol.
2,
pp.
in
lady,
even
very different context by Shakespeare's Troilus: "This is the monstruosity in love, is infinite and the execution confin'd, that the desire is boundless and the act a
and
slave to
infects the
tugg'd with
Cressida, IU.ii.81-83). Macbeth's all-or-nothing attitude apparently Banquo, one of whom describes himself as: "So weary with disasters, fortune, / That I would set my life on any chance, / To mend it, or be rid
(Troilus
murderers of
on't"
(IJJ.i.111-13).
30. See
also
Macbeth's
mention of
the "crack of
doom"
at
of the
apoca-
apocalyptic mode
in Macbeth,
see
characterization of
"an
318
lyptic See
Interpretation
personality: a man obsessed
p.
by finality, by
by
his bondage to
see
time"
(p. 58).
cism,
154. For
and
suggestive analogues
Nihilism,"
31. "In
play which, from die premises of the plot, is Future-driven, Macbeth, especially, is be in his See Francis Berry, Poet's Grammar: Person, Time and Mood in
Present."
Poetry
Mood"
(London: Routledge
provides an
and
insightful
See
also
analysis of
Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 53. This brief essay on "Macbeth: Tense and how Macbeth's distinctive sense of time is reflected in the
and the
Received Idea,
pp.
270
of
and
279. An
that
provided
by
the
"a
farmer,
on
expectation of
(U.iii.4-5).
Kirsch, The Passions of Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes Virginia, 1990), p. 95. 33. On this subject, see Timothy Fuller, "The Relation of Thought and Action in in Shakespeare's Political Pageant, pp. 209-18.
a similar
University
Press
of
Macbeth"
about
Macbeth: "the
is haunted
by
fellow-contrary
35. Macbeth.
impotence"
nightmare of
(p. 141).
your
Stars, hide
Let The
not
fires,
light
see
my black
and
deep desires;
let that be
see.
hand;
when
yet
Which the
fears,
it is done, to
(I.iv.50-53)
Lady Macbeth.
And
pall thee
Come,
thick night,
smoke of
in the dunnest
see not
hell,
it
makes.
the wound
(I.v.50-53)
In both passages, the
characters
blindly
act without
fully
a
unconsciously reveal what they will in fact do, namely act realizing the consequences of their deeds. synthesis of classical and biblical morality might produce an ethic very
different from either, see Leo Strauss, On Tyranny (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 191. 37. In this context, Lady Macbeth's line about Banquo and Fleance is suggestive: "But in them nature's copy's not (IJJ.ii.38). Nature lacks eternity; like the pagan hero, nature appears defective in Macbeth's eyes when judged by the standard of eternity.
eterne"
Republic;
parallels,
are interesting parallels here to Plato's presentation of the tyrannical soul in the especially 571a to 580a. The central parallel is the idea that in seeking to liberate his appetites, the tyrant becomes a slave to the force of desire in his soul. For a discussion of these
see
38. There
see White, especially p. 145. 39. See Lawrence Danson, Tragic Alphabet: Shakespeare's Drama of Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 138-39.
in Elizabethan
40. See, for example, Howard Felperin, Shakespearean Representation: Mimesis and Modernity Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 133, and Mack, pp. 19495. Roman Polanski's film of Macbeth, for all its problematic recognizes this point in
aspects,
terms
visual
Polanski intercuts
a scene of a
Caesarean
man not
bom
prophecy
of
the
of woman.
Rousseau's Adventure
Todd R. Flanders
Boston College
with
Robinson Crusoe
Rousseau banishes poetry altogether and suppresses all lies. At most he gives Emile Robinson Crusoe, who is not an "other" but only himself. Above all, no gods. Allan Bloom, I took up the Bible the first Words that
and
"Emile"'
and
began to
read
occurr'd to me were
opened
me
in the
Day
will
deliver,
glorify
me.
And I
add
this Part
of
to
it,
that whenever
they
come to a true
a much greater
Blessing
Sense
will
Crusoe2
Some
centuries ago
Robinson Crusoe
aftermath.
suffered a shipwreck.
with
Allan Bloom,
unawares, testifies to
on a verse
its
Juxtaposed
the meditation
by
Robinson
Daniel Defoe's
a careless uted
from Psalm 50, Bloom's observation suggests that he had not read novel. But how could this be? One may assume that Bloom, not
read a work
scholar, had
both
entitled
Robinson Crusoe
and attrib
to Defoe. Yet many of the more than twelve hundred editions of the novel
to appear
in English have
not
been
editions at
all.3
Many
of
can give no
hint
been among some publishers little awareness of the fact. The surprising truth is that the common experience of Robinson Crusoe
not
mainly be traced to Defoe, but instead to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Literary historian Martin Green argues that most of the world since 1762 "has taken Robinson Crusoe to be
what what
Rousseau
made of
it."4
And Rousseau
made of
it
editing."
ruthless
act of
His discussion
of the
"radically,
Rousseau's
had
written"
effort
a remarkable
notes
Green:
in the
one
(very humble)
niche
literary
system,
to a different "pastime reading for the or "the textbook of our "the one book
needful"
nonliterary,"
and exalted
niche,
times."
And
other
intellectuals followed his lead. There have been few intellectual fortune for
Thanks
on earlier are
such
dizzying
changes of
a single
book.
drafts,
due to Ernest L. Fortin, Daniel J. Mahoney, and Paul Seaton for insightful comments and to the Bradley Foundation whose fellowship made research and writing possible.
interpretation,
Spring 1997,
320
Interpretation
For
one result of
Rousseau's
recommendation of
dozens [Defoe] had written) was that Defoe entered into literary immortality, some thirty years after his literal death. After Emile, literary critics talked about Robinson
Crusoe. (Pp. 41-42)
Soon in
Emile, Rousseau-inspired
grew own
revisionism
commenced
several
languages,
and of
Crusoe
Defoe's
in
If, then,
also can
"shipwreck"
Crusoe
be
credited
to
Rousseau,
so
he be
jobs in
literary
history.
Rousseau
of
could
not,
of
course, have
predicted
the widespread
could not
was to prompt.
He thus
of the novel in Emile would eventually have on popular Defoe's book, namely, that such knowledge has largely been effaced. To illustrate this loss, let us review in outline what is commonly as sumed about Robinson. He is shipwrecked without resources on a desert isle,
the effect
his
use
knowledge
of
survives
Friday,
writes
and
only is
by his finally
out
to
belong
to
"Such is
Robinsoniana,"
Philip
Zaleski
of
Wesleyan
University.5
It is the
ture story, much like the adventure story offered the young Emile. And all of it
is
wrong.
of the present of a
Rousseauan lineage
masterwork
essay is not, however, to trace the remarkable hero from childhood. Neither is it simply to consider in its integrity or his intention with it, although some con
siderations along these lines will be necessary. The main interest is rather to inquire into Rousseau 's intention in utilizing Robinson Crusoe in the first place.
If Defoe's
novel
had to
to be suitable for
purposes to which
Rousseau
endeavors to
particular
book? Green
suggests
employ it, why did he choose that that Rousseau's choice of Crusoe "may even
might replace that one
be in
part accidental.
Another book
in
pinch"
(p. 41).
all,
Alexander Selkirk's
celebrated survival on an
after
inspired
story
Further,
the
voyager-surviving-shipwreck
something
of a
Swift's best-known
in
a work
Yet I
Green's
conjecture.
philosopher who,
declares, "I hate (Emile, p. 184), and then two paragraphs later names a book, a single book, on which his protagonist's pubescent education will hinge, does not randomly pluck a volume from a
library's
travel section.
we
subtitled "On
books"
Green may
see
Rousseau's
choice as
are) puzzled
ranges so
characterization that
purposes,
might
its aptness. I seek here to If Defoe's Robinson Crusoe ill suits Rousseau's Rousseau have had unstated purposes in to it?
it is difficult to
adverting
Rousseau's Adventure
I. RIGMAROLE
"Jean-Jacques,"
with
Robinson Crusoe
321
Emile's pedagogue,
gives
his
charge
Robinson Crusoe be
a while
cause
through
it the
boy
will come
to see
himself, for
man."
anyway, in
Robinson's state,
both
a state
"not that
will
of a social
On the basis
of this experi
ence of solitariness
Emile
be
beyond
dimension
all
of
human interdependence.
at
said, "suppresses
himself."
lies."
This is
gives
Emile is in truth
As
what
Bloom
said of
an
Emile is
practically
lies,
must
himself be
at
suppressed
Rousseau hints
writes,
his deed
of suppression and
served.
novel,"
he
disencumbered
shipwreck near
of all
beginning
with
Robinson's
to
his island
will
it,
ending with the arrival of the ship be Emile's entertainment and instruction.
which comes
(P.
184)
Emile
will
know nothing
of the
beginning
or
(nearly
one
third of the whole) and nothing of a fair amount in between. Although Rous
seau
does
the expungeable
of
this readily
becomes discernible
undertake a casual moment
us then reading for this purpose, prescinding for the reading specifically from theoretical difficulties.
The
Robinson is
. .
that
prodigal son.
"My
be
Father
asked me what
his seafaring proclivity made him a Reasons more than a meer wanand
dring
where
leaving
my Father's House
my
native
Country,
Application
pleads with
and
of
Pleasure"
Robinson to be
with
"the
middle
Station
of
Such
life is blessed
plication,
"all
agreeable
Diversions,
and all
desirable
to
Pleasures."
Ap
an
industry, fortune,
economic man of
his
son
be the
same.
Neither
here
in the
novel
father's
bless
Rather, Robinson is
convinced
does Robinson (who narrates) disparage his by misfortunes that, having him
would not
Robinson
eschews also
derlust,
he
is
but
to
amass
When
misadventures on
Robinson turns to
planting.
Soon
finding
himself
only to indulge a wan land him in Brazil, the brink of great success,
lured
by
322
Interpretation
once
As I had
content now,
I could not be away from my Parents, so of being a rich and View I had happy immoderate Desire thriving Man in my new Plantation, only to pursue a rash and (P. admitted. than Nature of the faster the 32) Thing rising
done
...
in the
breaking
leave
but I
must go and
the
of
...
What
this irresistible
voyage
Rob
inson's rise?
planter should
Acquiring
estate
slaves on
Why
would a well-to-do
leave his
voyage?
As supercargo, "I
Stock"
pay.
have my equal Share of the Negroes without providing any Part of the (p. 33). In other words, he would have his chattels without needing to This was the mission that aborted by shipwreck, stranding our hero on the
author of plain
Emile
should
find
such
early
is
to any
having
Rousseau. (No
the reader
chains"
prefers
of
And,
when subjected
Robinson
settles
reaps an enormous
fortune in
the sale of
his Brazilian
back in England, presumably to live the life of ease and pleasure recom mended by his father. He does end up considerably richer than his father would have found
prudent of
and
The image
begins, evoking
as
it
does the
phor
parable mere
but
literary
from Luke's Gospel, is in the end neither allegory allusion. Robinson is not contrite upon his
to
England. His father is dead, so there is no reconciliation, no family reunion. This prodigal returns to his native country with his economic view of life intact
albeit enhanced
by
the memory of
diverting
adventures
and, Defoe
hints,
the
The
has
is
gained no substantive
or
insights into
fulfillment
from his
If Robinson Crusoe
man"
Luke,
is he
a modem
Odysseus.
of
Nor,
island
narrative
Rous
needs.
"natural"
Brute"
primarily life according to "Principles of to (p. 71). He readily distinguishes himself from Afri
Nature"
American
native
peoples,
more
whom
he
regards
ing
precivil pointed.
human
being
is
likely
to
to
be
a cannibal. a
This
is
not
disap
destination for
savages
from the
Fri gratify a passion for "inhumane not just happen onto the island but is brought slated captive, for devouring. Robinson, both Friday's liberator and new captor, soon leams that his man too is a cannibal, and promptly undertakes to wean him of the nearby mainland day himself does
Feastings."
with
Robinson Crusoe
323
apparentiy natural lust for human flesh. (The present-day reader finds a comic aspect in Robinson's effort to persuade Friday that alternative victuals provide
tolerable substitutes.)
Natural
man
in Robinson Crusoe is
of a
red
in tooth
and claw.
Reeling
and other
discovery
"Shore
spread with
Bones
humane
Bodies,"
Robinson
Affection
[he]
such
my soul, and with a Flood of Tears in my Eyes, gave God Thanks that had cast my first Lot in a Part of the World, where I was distinguish'd from
of
dreadful Creatures
as
these.
(Pp.
129-30)
Robinson
tial,
man
as
his Englishness (or, more broadly, his Europeanness) as essen that alone which separates him from the depravity to which uncivilized
sees prone.
is
It
would
of
this novel as
concerning Man on a desert isle. Rather it concerns a late seventeenth-century Englishman on a desert isle. Robinson's Englishness is accented throughout the
island
narrative.
political
customs.6
Wherever possible, he seeks to imitate his nation's An early project is to fashion a table and chair Robinson designates himself king, with housecats. He declares the island his
"Castie."
social and
so
that he
a
may dine
parrot, a
properly. and
subjects
including
rude
dog,
"realm."
His
cave-
dwelling
from the
he dubs
vessel
a which
He is
"Master"
to Friday. When
he eventually leaves, he becomes their On his island, he is legislator, judge, and executive; at times he deliberates over justice, takes prisoners, holds hostages, wages battle, grants amnesty. Yet for all his fondness for his homeland
his
situation on a and appropriation of an
in
desert isle
attests to
not
with
England:
a citizen
does
does
not crown
himself king. While England lives in him, Robinson in gland. Never in the story is there consideration of duty
or service
Wherever he finds himself, Robinson benefits from a common national store of experiences and mores; but he is unobliged. He comes and goes as he pleases
and
if he
pleases.
His
attitude
toward country
America,
who
Englishness that
can altogether
do
without
England. This is
novelty, one
char
new
disparagingly
called
the
That Robinson is
bourgeois is
evident
in the
He
the
as
views other
human beings
or to
instrumental,
when on
to his business
not ungrateful, no
the
island
his
escape pays
it. He is
but his
gratitude to others
invariably
controlling bond of family, friendship, or fatherland. good. And consider Marx's reflections on Robin common earthly
economics:
island
324
Interpretation
are diversity of [Robinson's] productive functions, he knows that they hence only different of of one and the same different forms Robinson, activity only Our friend Robinson Crusoe learns modes of human labor. by experience, and having saved a watch, ledger, ink and pen from the shipwreck, he soon begins,
Despite the
like
a good
Englishman,
to
keep
a set of
books. His
stock-book contains a
finally
he possesses, of the various operations necessary for of the labour-time that specific quantities of these
him. All the
relations
have
on average cost
between Robinson
and
. . .
these
objects that
form his
[,
and]
determinants
of
value.8
Robinson
and after
on
homo
economicus
that
he
was
before he landed
he departs.
picture of
Yet the
During
"the
his
first
year of
solitude,
Robinson is
moved to reflect on
of
life-endangering
and
bout
ague,"
of
lot. He
so
rebukes
himself for
having
long
with
.
.
long
. .
applied
illness, he is
and
on
seized
a miserable
his
recognize a radical
dependency
God,
and
to
read
Providential
script.
He
will come
his self-preserving activities to the will of God as he understands it. His fear of miserable death will become an impetus for a wholesale religious
to subordinate
reinterpretation of
life. This is
ean contractarianism.
not exactly the self-preserving impulse of Lock And Robinson's religion is not the tame, civil religion of
Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Defoe's island
nipresence of
narrative
is the
om
Providence, sin, repentance, and redemp tion. All the more astonishing, in this light, is a comment of Marx that betrays a Rousseauan pedigree: "Of [Robinson's] prayers and the like, we take no ac
reflection on
Protestant
count
since our
friend takes
pleasure
in them
recreation"
and sees
them as
during
divine
his
ague,
perceive the
reality
of
retribution.
all the
Variety
of of
day befallen
or that or
much as one
Thought
being
the Hand of
against
for my Sin; my
were
...
rebellious
Behaviour
God, my Father,
general
it
was a
my
present
of
great; or
was
so much as a
Course
...
my
wicked
Life.
meerly thoughtless
not
God,
or a
Providence.
(P.
72)
Christian
Robinson does
musings.
He
undergoes a powerful
July 4. In
the
Morning
read
Bible,
and
upon
beginning
my
at
the New
Testament, I
every
began seriously to
it,
and
impos'd
Morning
with
Robinson Crusoe
325
and
set
with
and the
Words, All
these
Things have
not
begging of God to give me Repentance, Day that reading the Scripture, I came to
Saviour,
to give
Words, He is
exalted a
Prince
and a
Repentance,
and to give
Remission: I threw down the Book, and with my Heart as well as my Hands lifted up to Heaven, in a Kind of Extasy of Joy, I cry'd out aloud, Jesus, thou Son of
David, Jesus,
The
prose
thou exalted
Prince
and
Saviour, Give
me
ample.
and the
foregoing
is
hardly
an
isolated
ex
years on the
island, Robinson
rejoices that
is brought to "know Christ Jesus, to know whom is life When Robinson would reflect on this, "a secret Joy run through every Part of my
Friday
Soul,
had
eternal."
and
frequently
me."
was
which
so often
of all
possibly
have befallen
made
To have
it
all worthwhile.
Christian,
Remainder of my Time. The Savage better than I; though I have reason to hope, and
. . .
bless God for it, that we were equally penitent, and comforted restor'd Penitents; we had here the Word of God to read, and no farther off from his Spirit to instruct,
than
if
we
The
Englishman
are united at
by
love
of a
"natural"
other
ties, the
have but
In this their
differences fall
by
the wayside.
and
Friday
one
book
as a constant compan
ion. Their book, of course, the young Emile is not to encounter at all. So in order for Emile to avoid that book the Robinson and to avoid so much more
Crusoe that is to be his
bered"
necessarily be "disencum
of a vast amount of
When
culties emerge
reading of Robinson Crusoe turns from casual to inquiring, diffi from the text. How is it possible to square Robinson's religious
reinterpretation of
life
with
his lack
of
England,
for
having
reader
an act which
The
is
at a
loss, for
that matter, to
identify exactly of what sins Robinson Certainly he had no qualms about having
em-
326
Interpretation
on a
slave-trading expedition, although this would seem to have been the proximate cause of his island distress and thus might easily have been
barked
interpreted
powerful
as an
invitation to divine
conversion
retribution.
How, further,
can
Robinson's
that
Christian
be
squared with
the bourgeois
self-interest
continues most
The
above are
but
sampling
of
provided grist
for the
two
criticism.9
centuries of
the novel
criti
in
considerable
tension that
is
never resolved
cal attempts
ongoing bourgeois character of his soul cannot, as has Ethic.10 been argued, be resolved by chalking it up to a nascent Protestant An appraisal in light of the "Weber proves unsatisfactory; Robinson never
son's conversion and the
thesis"
successfully integrates his religious musings, typified by a tone nation, into a life of otherwise blatantly worldly strivings.
Did Defoe intend to leave
unresolved
of ascetic
resig
he? A study by Thomas S. Schrock, "Considering Crusoe,"" suggests that De foe did intend to leave tensions in the novel. In a tour de force of close reading
and
the best overall analysis available, Schrock reveals a depth to Defoe's work
belying
Green's
view
initially
nonliterary."
He
of esoteric writer.
His
method
involves
comparison of
Robin
Crusoe
with two
lesser known
Robinson
Crusoe,
and
The Farther Adventures of Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe. "I take all these
works
by Defoe,
seriously,"
neglected writings
he notes,
because I believe that, when an author presents a work of ostensibly connected parts, all said to come from the mind and experience of the same protagonist. .
rebuttable to
be
sure
is that he
connected,
i.e.,
as parts of a whole
likely
to be more reliable
. . .
guides to the
interpretation
of each other
reading elicits enough real interdependence in the volumes to justify saying it would be as arbitrarily foolish to ignore the lesser known portions of the work as it would be to interpret the island narrative
sympathetic
[I]n the
case of
Crusoe,
mechanically in light
of those portions.
(Pp. 78-79,
n.
6)
Schrock's interdependence hypothesis stands in contrast to a tradition that has generally taken the Farther Adventures as an afterthought (begun and com pleted within months of the first volume's appearance) designed to cash in on
the original's popularity, and the
of
Serious Reflections
as a
disjointed
assortment
Defoe
essays packaged
for marketing
his famous
protagonist.
self, who
Schrock's hypothesis would seem to be supported says in the preface to the Serious Reflections,
of
by
Crusoe him
As the design
execution,
so
everything is
said to
and
last in the is
not
with
Robinson Crusoe
327
merely the product of the two first volumes, but the two first volumes may rather be called the product of this. The fable is always made for the moral, not the moral for the fable.'2
The
moral
volumes
is,
roughly, fourfold:
(1)
there
grace at
is
no
God; (2)
cannot
itself
la
is
compelled
by
of violent
is the human being's fundamental animating principle; and (4) a la Locke, material comfort is the sine qua non of anything that could be deemed happiness or blessedness.
That the
whole of
this moral can be extrapolated through painstaking com the three texts
parison, contrast,
case
and analysis of
is,
I concur,
plausible.
Schrock's
is
strong.
Less compelling
would
be
an argument
that Defoe intended such esoteric moralism in toto. making explicitly Robinson's statement in the Serious Reflections that "the two first volumes may be called the product of should be viewed cautiously as what it was, a
avoids
this" ...
fact
and on
corroborating evidence that Defoe penned Robinson Crusoe as the opening installment of a three-volume opus. It could of course be that De foe's Robinson intended a moral to be drawn from the narrative volumes that
no
discovered
largely
corre
Maximillian E. Novak, that Defoe had some modem political philosophy that is at least in
displayed in
Robinson."
Defoe was, clearly, a kind of political thinker, if not one of the first rank. He flirted with Grotianism, as evidenced in an early pamphlet, and, as Michael Zuckert has observed, "sooner or later he started to make Lockean arguments
instead,
It is
or
in
addition.
By
1701
Defoe had
embraced
Lockean
principles."14
quite possible
(as has
often
been
done)
"first
wave"
Crusoe scholars in his contention that Defoe, or at any rate God or Providence. He stands against what he acknowl discounts Robinson, edges to be the "prevailing view, indeed the great theme of present day Crusoe
among
studies,"
is his
principle"
vital
(p. 76).
could natu
The
uniqueness of what
shall call
rally be as much a sign of accuracy as of idiosyncracy. Let investigate key components of the argument. The
crux of the thesis
us then
briefly
he
summarizes as
follows:
All
[Robinson's]
blessings
of religious
deliverance has to be
read
in
all
the light of
his virtually
the
ceaseless endeavor to
what
he
along
regarded as
him,
the fear of
only necessary and sufficient salvation God is as nothing next to the fear of man. He
For
own
his
328
Interpretation
and
prudence
fear
evil,
not on prayer or
Providence to
which
is
state of sin.
77)
rogues and sav
Robinson
speculates
routinely
on the threat of
repentance
falling
prey to
(see Robin
Crusoe,
than
p.
77). When
demonic
perils.'5
vision
him, he
is
views
it
as a
warning
son
sign of all-too-human
That this
calls
more real
to Robin
any
vision
of
God, Schrock
"the
principal
defect in Crusoe's
conversion."
One
can
detect
in Defoe's
presenta
on
disingenuousness
says that
the
subject of
he
would
be
satisfied
knowing
he
labors
and plots
ions in the
meantime
instrumental to attaining it. Is there not contradiction here? Moreover Robinson has a tendency, intimated at points in the narrative and more pronounced in the
Reflections,
pension of evidence of
toward subordination of
Providence
"atheism,"
altogether
Providence to necessity or toward the sus (Schrock, pp. 87-92, 97-104). Is not this
word?
to use Schrock's
of
Defoe's
presentation smack of a
Lockean dis
with
Defoe's
presentation
may, alternatively,
principles that
betray
a confused
sincerity,
bom
cal
of an embrace of
Lockean
falls
understanding or consistency. Robinson's religion is not, it bears repeating, that of Locke in The Reasonableness of Christianity. Defoe expends no effort on making it appear in any modem philosophic sense. Textual
"reasonable"
examples quoted
in
section one of
illustrate,
rather,
what
have
called the
virtually Augustinian
attempts
Robinson's
religious musings.
Schrock, however,
of religious
in
tention
in the
"Crusoe's
conversion occurred
flu,"
dur
observes century version of the Hong Kong Schrock (p. 79). He interprets as evidence of conversion a part of the June 28 journal entry in which an ailing Robinson ponders words of the psalmist: Call
ing
bout
of a seventeenth
Day of Trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me. "To be sure, Crusoe may have experienced some religious feelings during his ill ness. But his last word on sickbed conversions is that a man is not 'fit for
on me
...
in the
Repentance
on a
Sick
Bed'"
understands
Robinson to be
spurious"
sub
tly telling
best his
religious
feelings
were
all along.
The startling revelation of a veiled disavowal of faith by Robinson hinges on Schrock's June 28 placement of the conversion. And this placement is oddly chosen. Robinson had on that occasion "opened the Book" and only
"casually,"
Rousseau's Adventure
the psalmist's were
with
Robinson Crusoe
me."
329
that occurr'd to
He
avers that
"my
Head
was
Time."
This
almost stupify'd
my
which
Robinson
concludes
the evening
by downing
tobacco-steeped mm,
"flew up in my
Impression"
Head
on
violently"
him,
and
he
"upon them very Robinson is the twenty-eighth he did not fully have his wits
of a proper conversion
often,"
him.
expe
experience,
no
hint
date
that
his
rience
A
itself decisive.
the conversion
much
better
placement of
is
July 4,
. . .
about which
Schrock
this
says
Bible."
Yet it
was on
date that Robinson, "in a Kind of Extasy of Joy Jesus to give him repentance. Devoted biblical inquiry,
the-Spirit, God. And the
conversion
aloud"
cry'd out
for
ecstatic
movement-in-
to
did
In
day
been
deliver'
d,
"Immediately"
and given
Recovery from my
Sickness"
(pp. 76-77).
understands
Robinson
elsewhere
informing
be
discovering
inclusive
religious
feelings
(Schrock,
what could
gathered
from
more
evaluation of
reflections after
following
all
"Thus
my Fear
banish'
all
my
religious
Hope;
p.
which was
founded
.
.
Experience
his Goodness,
much of
now vanished
(Robinson Crusoe,
make
122). But in
order
to make so
nothing
at all of a
lengthy
passage on the
very
next page.
How
secret
of
Man!
and
by
what
present!
differing differing To Day we love what to Morrow we hate; to Day we seek what to Morrow we shun; to Day we desire what to Morrow we fear; nay even tremble at the Apprehensions of; this was exemplify'd in me at this Time in the most lively
Springs
are the
Affections hurry'd
Circumstances
Manner imaginable; for I whose only Affliction was, that I seem'd banished from human Society, that I was alone, circumscrib'd by the boundless Ocean, cut off from Mankind, and condemn d to what I call'd silent Life; that I was as one who
Heaven thought
the rest of
seem'd not
worthy to be
number'
or to appear would
seen one of
Species,
could
among have
Blessing
that
Heaven it self, I
should now
to the
supreme
Blessing
of
Salvation,
tremble at the
very Apprehensions of seeing a Man, and was ready to but the Shadow or silent Appearance of a Man's having set
330
Interpretation
Such is the
great many uneven State of human Life: And it afforded me a Speculations afterwards, when I had a little recover'd my first Surprize; I considered that this was the Station of Life the infinitely wise and good Providence
curious
of
that as
could not
foresee
what
the
Ends
of
Divine I
was
Wisdom
be in
all
this,
so
was not to
as
an undoubted
Right
by
Creation to
dispose
of me
absolutely as he thought fit; and who, as I was a Creature who had offended him, had likewise a judicial Right to condemn me to what Punishment he thought fit; and that it was my Part to submit to bear his Indignation, because I had sinn'd
against
him.
reflected that
I then
God,
only Righteous but Omnipotent, as he me, so he was able to deliver me; that if
also to
absolutely hope in him, pray to him, daily Providence. These Thoughts took Months.
. .
fit to do it, 'twas my unquestion'd Duty to resign my self entirely to his Will; and on the other Hand, it was my Duty
and
his
me
a man
from
are other
difficulties in
feeling
it,
at
thus far
should
suffice
to
on
render
the very
least,
problematic.17
Schrock is Robinson
correct
insisting
post-conversion
orthodoxy, or a
new stead
fastness in trusting God. The passage reproduced above, with its tone of pious resignation, is not Robinson's last word in religious sentiment any more than
was
by
of
by
the
footprint
The
point
is,
there is no
last
in
itself,
and an effort
to
elicit one
cannot succeed.
As observed, Schrock views the great realism of Robinson's fear of man, in contrast with any fear of God, to be the principal defect in the conversion to Christianity. It may in truth be Calvinism an orthodoxy with
proves of a grave
vantage of orthodox
which
beyond doubt, associated Robinson. But why should a Calvinist standard orthodoxy be similarly applied by Schrock in dissociating Robinson from
That Robinson's
creator was a
religion?
Dissenter is
a matter of
does
not of
itself be
suffice
for,
against, positing
Calvinism
as a standard
by
which
Defoe's
never
his
char
judged.18
Defoe
is
his
as still
more evidence of
Robinson's
atheism.
and
More
likely, I think, is
of
it indicates
religious
a
the same
thing
as
do the variety
irreconcilability
Robinson's
state
expressions and
reflections, namely,
an eclecticism
or, to
it differently,
Rousseau's Adventure
confusion.
was
with
Robinson Crusoe
331
Robinson's
religion
may
or
(a perennially
contested
issue),
may not be Defoe's, whatever Defoe's but Robinson's religion would not have
variegated
been lence
unrecognizable
in the
increasingly
tianity during
about
early
eighteenth
Defoe's
si
Robinson's denominational
a religious
affiliation
may
well
have
served to turn
Robinson into
Everyman for
a popular audience.
very recognizability
notion
of
Robinson's
views that
that religion
is his
vital principle.
nature,"
Robinson's ongoing desire to be delivered from the "state of conflicting statements about Providence, his lack of contrition for
awareness of certain
his
or
even and
sins,
and other
or
belief
by
the
is to
him too
much credit.
It is to
see
in him
coherence
by
of
extension, to
to Defoe a
synoptic
grasp
theoretical
implications
nor
warranted neither
by
his
biography
by
early his
modem political
philosophy
oeuvre.20
"The fable is
tions.
always made
for the
moral,"
Robinson
said
in Serious Reflec
We
are now
left
with
avellian element
(if tempered),
its Hobbesian
and
this
because
require
although
Schrock is
correct moral
it,
part of the
intended
seem
to
We
chosen
return
to a
Robinson Crusoe
might
suggestion that
seau selected
be
Crusoe accidentally is not, I have argued, supportable. Nor would suggestion that he read the book only cursorily: his acknowledgement of
that must
"rigmarole"
be dispensed
in
determining
detail,
as
what consti
to minute
in
describing
the
Robinson's
parasol
apparel.
p.
He bothers
even
do
without
(Emile,
books
185).
The
adoption and
thoroughgoing
recharacterization of a popular of
book
a
writer of
who pronounces
his hatred
books
suggests
instead
by a deep
reading
requires
and a studied
intention. It is surely
significant
mentions
as author.
Yet if objectivity
first be
understood
as
he
understands
himself,
then
some readers of
son
Emile
cannot
but
wish
Crusoe. Indeed
to
one
ence
we may assume that, in calling the attention of his audi book alone, Defoe's novel, it was Rousseau's expectation that
Defoe.2'
Only by
reading Defoe
332
Interpretation
aware of
those
elements
Rousseau
suppressed.
Only by
reading
to those
the
attentive student
discover that, in
appears
drawing
attention
elements
by
to be engaging an
enemy.22
Not
poet
unlike
the Socrates
certain
to say
about
their opposites. In
true:
he banishes poetry
Rousseau
as the
implicitly
rejects
Schrock's
approach of
trilogy
its
parts
of unified
of
be adequately
Rousseau too
religion, and
must
have
recognized
theology
or
action
where.
in the first
Indeed the
volume
"rigmarole"
Rousseau's
recommendation of
but
may indicate
an appraisal with
irreconcilable,
on the
final judgment
quality
the
and coherence of
Robinson's thought.
an
enemy in his
use of
Defoe's work,
be
of
something
incoherence. If he
is
banishing
Rousseau's Emile
man and
phy.
first
renaturalized political
is thus
a crucial element
in the
Defoe's
in
part
based
on teachings of
Rousseau's political philosophy ex plicitly engages. Defoe's novel and its hero could, then, be seen to be ripe for a dialectical encounter with Rousseau's novel and its hero. Robinson provides the
earlier modern political philosophers whom
predecessors. what
and
his
creation and
Rousseau
he
Hobbes
man."23
Locke:
man
"they
pride,
they de
scribed civil
Their
in the
state of nature
all of which
is
characterized
by
need,
avarice, oppression,
desires,
of
and
on
from
civil
society; Robinson
his island
teristics,
return.
and the
fact
their
place to which
he longs to
an irony in Robinson's impulse to return to civil society. When in England, Brazil, wherever he is bored to distraction. He needs civil society but has no vision of what happiness in its bosom would be. In its bosom, he invariably wants to leave. His life is finally what Leo Strauss, in an
There is
there
analysis of
Locke, memorably
need
phrased a
"joyless
quest
for
joy."
But Robinson's
for diversion is
rendered a
and per
haps
a touch more
Pascalian
by
his
disconcertingly
incongruous
religiosity.
The
nei
dangerous
Locke,
the
amour-propre
Rousseau's Adventure
bom any
of
with
Robinson Crusoe
dangers
333
in
society,
as
recognizes
sin.
at all
of these characteristics
them rather to
Unlike deformations
wrought
by
dumb
nature or societal
convention, the
sin of
fallen judge
man
is
not
amenable to
merely human
correction.
And if
in light
with
of a
Robinsonian
whether
confusion about
Providence, it is impossible
to any correction.
to
clarity
of
its deformations
are amenable
For the
early or in
attentive student of
the
failure
philosophy to apprehend
in their
origin
is
required
further
offers a case
for their containment, direction, and satisfaction. He study in their failure to understand the socialized human
of
other.24
being's intrinsic religiosity, or to deal effectively with the delicate interplay this dimension of soul on the one hand and societal convention on the
For the
man general reader of on an
stranded
"civil"
adventure-
immediately
attractive.
And Robinson
was
immediately
to a popular readership in eighteenth-century England. Defoe gave his an agreeable hero blessed with a highly diverting life; I say blessed
says
cursed
Robinson
since)
readers
would not
would
because early readers of the novel (and most typically have left with the impression that Robinson have
wished
They
they
and
them
have eagerly awaited reports of Robinson's "farther They have seen in Defoe's hero one who, in attitude and aspiration, was one of only more interesting. With a little luck and a little gumption, anyone
a new and called the
adventures."
among them could be Robinson Crusoe. Defoe could be said to have epitomized breed
nobles with of
(to
Rousseau) dangerous
poet.25
unseemly creature,
what might
be
bourgeois
charming
He
en
by
an
all
the while
impossible melange,
Defoe's
novel
ac
The general reader charmed by cording to have been unlikely to have experienced a tension between being citizen or subject and being what would come to be called bourgeois. And he would have
would
Rousseau.26
felt
no tension
of these and
his
religion.
He
would
have
been,
as
Robinson
is,
confused modem
hybrid.
This
confused modem
hybrid,
so typical of actual
bourgeois societies,
to
overcome
pre
the bour
made
in the
could not
easily be
to see
himself
as
debased
or contemptible;
he
tion at Nietzsche's
within
portrait of
the "last
man."
He did
divisions fac
his
soul.
Having
within,
he had
rebuilt
similes of them
had
not
genuinely
overcome
them.
Yet in
need of
liberation, he Still,
no
longer
experienced
the need.
man was not
as a close
study
of
fully
334
Interpretation
self-satisfied either.
He
was educable.
In Robinson,
in
a situation
rife
with
human
possibility.
His island is
State
of
Nature, but
he is constitutionally blinded to the possibilities of original freedom. Rousseau redraws Robinson, supplying him with the nature denied him by Defoe and
misunderstood
by
Defoe's
philosophic teachers.
not
at
Rather,
through
legerdemain, Robinson is
charmed reader of
Robinson Crusoe to
way that
ables
enables
novel
instead
in
way
man
that en
him to
his
share
Only
be he
thus
discover
in himself the
cover
confusion
that
must
overcome.
unfelt needs.
Only
thus may
gain some
Only inkling
way to their
satisfaction.
CONCLUSION
Schrock's insightful
analysis
has been
crucial
in
leading
his
us
to discover the
of
heart
of
problem
that Rousseau
addressed
through
use
Robinson
measure
a consequent of
"Man"
inten
is
not whole.
Robinson is
neither
Schrock
it
have
overlaying it with a veneer of religiosity. Because his soul is so augmented, though, Schrock is right to question Robin son's sincerity. But Robinson's religion turns out to be strangely sincere. That is
augmented
Robinson's
by
Rousseau
his
Centrally,
they did
se with sulted
in
integrating
the
human
being
per
its
incarnation,
of
Emile,
will
will
on
the other
hand, is
educated to
integrated
whole.
Religion
necessarily be part of his education eventually, and Emile's religion too be sincere; in fact its presentation through the Savoyard Vicar's profession
would spark a revolution
of
faith
in
son's, is to be of
a piece with
To
remake
the
human
being
is
task of
Rousseau's
political
thought.
Defoe's
most
famous
work reveals
among
modem men.
Crusoe
shows
his
awareness of these
also reveals
face
of them.
It thereby
something
his
ambitions.
with
Robinson Crusoe
335
NOTES
1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 9. in Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs (New York: Simon and Schuster, Essay reprinted as 1990), pp. 177-207.
"Emile"
2. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, ed. Michael Shinagel, a Norton Critical Edition (New York: pp. 75, 77. All Robinson Crusoe citations are from this authoritative 3. A 1979
count
found 1,198
editions
in English
of
alone.
then.
See
Philip Zaleski,
Robinson
First Things,
May 1995,
p.
38. 4. Martin Green, The Robinson Crusoe Story (University Park: The Pennsylvania State Univer sity Press, 1990), p. 40. 5. Op. cit., p. 39. Zaleski's article, concerning the absence of Defoe's religious themes from many editions of Crusoe, first alerted me to investigate the possibility of a Rousseau connection. 6. See Maximillian E. Novak, "The Economic Meaning of Robinson in Frank H. Ellis, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
Crusoe,"
1969),
pp.
97-102.
emphasizes that
subjects of
lord
King
James.
trans.
with
Ben Fowkes (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), vol. 1, pp. 169Robinson Crusoe gained peculiar expression in the Soviet Union
sonesque
1933. That year, the Soviet Writers Circle put Defoe, along with Verne (who wrote the RobinLTle mysterieuse) and Swift, at the head of a list of authors most deserving of translation
p.
(Green,
140).
centuries of
Crusoe
criticism can
and most
1962),
10. See, for example, Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: pp. 60-92.
University
of
California Press,
11. Interpretation 1 (1970): 76-106, 169-232. 12. Daniel Defoe, Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, in Harold Bloom, ed., op. cit., p. 5. 13. Novak is, Schrock remarks with measured approval, "the one prominent truant from the
(p. 77 n. 5). See Maximillian E. Novak, Defoe and the prevailing school of Crusoe Nature of Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1963). 14. Michael P. Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
interpretation"
pp.
290-91.
search
82-83. In his
for
marks of
overlooks a candidate
cloud"
reports of
me."
his
vision that
dubious piety in the Crusoe corpus, Schrock "I saw a Man descend from a great
at
"to kill
Robinson's language is
a
least vaguely
"
. .
reminiscent of
a passage
saw
. . .
in
the Hebrew
by
Christians to be
the
key
instance heaven
of messianic prophecy:
"I
one
like
a son of man
[who]
came with
clouds of
(Daniel 7:13).
tion that
16. Robinson Crusoe, p. 123. William H. Halewood accurately views this passage as an indica are unceasing, and we are reminded that they go on Robinson's "religious reflections
...
even when
Crusoe,"
the
narrative
is
matters"
("Religion
and
in Ellis, ed., op. cit., p. 81.) 17. One other such difficulty has to do in
a universe governed
with chance.
Schrock
states that
by
Providence. He
also
develops
interesting
argu
Crusoe in fact subtly and almost imperceptibly supplants Providence with chance and thereby again reveals his atheism. Yet Schrock cannot but acknowledge that Robinson's customary denials of the existence of chance "place him in perfect agreement with his author, as the latter is
understood"
generally
and perhaps
correctly
(italics supplied,
p.
101).
336
Interpretation
Robinson'
position on chance?
relation
questions
doctrine
of
Providence. Schrock
and
views
as more
Calvin
are
hardly
the
only
have
notoriously perplexing
perspicacious
relations of
Providence
be
and contingency.
Nor
should the
making
conflicting
theoretically
drawn
by
dilettantish thinker
who was
and enthusiasm
for
Simply
in
not a char
enthusiasm
accords a role to
does
not render
him
Machiavellian.
Schrock, though, identifies a passage in Serious Reflections which he deems the coup de grdce in establishing the priority of fonuna. There Robinson approvingly quotes a clergyman as saying in the direction of certain events, "Providence might that while Providence may have "some
share"
perhaps
be limited
by
some superior
direction,
it is
Nature,
but
blowing
listeth."
where
Schrock
grants
is
"enigmatic,"
ventures that
by
the "superior
direction"
meant
"either the
Chance,
or some
thing like
though, only
by discounting
it
listeth,"
the words
means
(pp. 103-4). He may reach this conclusion, lifted from John 3:8, where Jesus, in speaking of a "wind
motion"
blowing
the
where
clearly
the
Holy
clergyman's use of
biblical
phrase
is in
be
a context
wonder what
it
could mean
utterance. And wholly alien to that of for God's Providence to be directed by God's
we are
Holy Spirit.
explained
by being
explained away.
18. While adverting repeatedly to Calvin's authority, Schrock turns to the authority of the An glican divine, Hooker, in a note. In so doing, he allows that "Quotation from Hooker may make the
reader wonder
note there
on which
just what orthodoxy I think Crusoe should be judged by. But on the subject of this is little if any difference between Hooker and Calvin, and that goes for many other points the great Anglican and the Genevan would be united in opposition to the attitudes and
ideas
with which
Crusoe indulges
himself."
(pp. 88
n.
24). Calvinism
remains
Schrock's
standard of
orthodoxy.
what
But
why?
Why, for
orthodoxy"
(almost
always a some
troubled concept) be consulted in the matter of Robinson's religion? Robinson's faith, observes J. Paul Hunter, "is intended to be unobjectionable to both Anglican and Dissenter. Defoe's preface to the 1715 volume of The Family Instructor applies equally well to
pursuit of
Opinion,
as to
Church
both
of
England
are
or
Dissenter,
so
be taken here
on the one
Side
or the
other; as I
hope both
cit., p. 118
Christians
least
both
impartially
directed to
op.
without the
n.
distinction' "
("Robinson Crusoe's
be
an orthodox
Deliverance,"
8.)
faith
will not
An
"unobjectionable"
faith
of
any stripe,
nobody's
liter
against objections.
avowed
Christian
for
orthodoxy, is
one partic
ularly astute observer among many who found Robinson's religion both real and unobjectionable: "Crusoe rises only where all men may be made to feel that they might and that they ought to rise in religion, in resignation, in dependence on, and thankful acknowledgement of the divine mercy and (In Shinagel, ed., Robinson Crusoe, p. 289). 19. Schrock wisely sidesteps the issue of Defoe's religion. Defoe's religious per
goodness"
"[Supposing
suasion can
be
and
in Crusoe,
or
by
Robinson Crusoe, we are not justified Crusoe. For all we know, Defoe con
a person and/or a
doctrine
uncongenial to
his
own
religious, if not to
from the book of essays: seeing how troublesome those books [the narratives] prove to be, it was considerate of Crusoe to comment thematically in the Serious Reflections" (p. 194). But he also acknowledges that there
narratives
. . ...
his artistic, (p. 78 n. 6). 20. Schrock's interpretive approach requires him to foe's enterprise. He reads this coherence back into the
assume a
high level
of coherence
in De
"
with
Robinson Crusoe
examples:
337
instances
son says
part"
a nephew upon
return to
according to the
family
accounts
nephew would
by
then
have been
off'
least he
says that
he "pull'd
his
clothes
before swimming back to his ship for supplies, later stuffed his pockets with biscuits.
informing
Critics have
germane
long
instances
of what appears to
be
hasty
The
It
Defoe
careful enough
in his
composition of these
should
be
in
"Defoe,
who made
his
living
op.
as a
journalist,
churned out
seven other
books the
he fathered
Robinson"
(Zaleski,
cit., p. 38).
A contemporary critic of Defoe (the two knew and disliked each other), Charles Gildon, saw the more substantive inconsistencies in the narratives as representative of inconsistencies in Defoe himself. In
a
by
Robinson
and
Friday. Defoe
Robinson responds, "Why, that you have made me a strange whimsical, inconsistent Being, in three Weeks losing all the Religion of a Pious Education; and when you bring me again to a Sense of the Want of Religion, you make me quit that upon Defoe later every Whimsy; you make me extravagantly Zealous, and as extravagantly Remiss. defends himself by saying that "I have been all my Life that Rambling, Inconsistent Creature, I would not have you therefore complain any more of the Contradic which I have made thee. Critics have tion of your character, since that is of a Piece with the whole Design of my
. .
...
Book."
usually
could as
Gildon's parody as a rant, as sour grapes from a writer of lesser success than Defoe. It from an acquaintance of Defoe moreover easily be read as contemporaneous evidence that Defoe and his creation were alike paragons of inconsistency.
read
of this contention
is
directly
he
suppresses
Defoe, in both
23. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Second Discourse, in Roger D. Masters, ed., The First
Discourses (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), p. 102. It is significant that in Emile Jean-Jacques wants for his
such
"felicity"
Second
charge a
on
Robinson's island
that
Friday
will
hardly
of
be
a concern
(p. 185).
p.
Consider
also
99: "In
spite of
his environment,
and
racking
and
still more
put
laborious
he
goes on
in
drudgery
to
death to
"man"
himself in
a position to
live.' "
24. The religiosity intrinsic to socialized man is to be distinguished from the nonreligious in Rousseau's state of nature. Cf. Second Discourse and the Savoyard Vicar's simplicity of
profession of
25. Although
identify
was
Don Quixote
as
truly
identifying
dangerous
potentialities of
the
new art
and, with
Book
4,
chapter
8.
Prescott's Conquests:
Anthropophagy, Auto-da-Fe
Eternal Return
Colin D. Pearce
Humber College
and
"It was my hint to speak of Cannibals that each (other) eat, The Anthropophagai, and men whose heads (Do grow) beneath their shoulders. These things to hear
...
younger
day:
Tennyson
fifty
years of
Europe than
a cycle of
"Human
sacrifice!
...
his
soul
sun-mystery,
departed back, back into the blood-sacrificial preaway from his own white
. . .
D.H. Lawrence
INTRODUCTION
It sary
in
the
light
of the
Christopher Columbus's
arrival
few
years
ago,
to
great
histories,
mm to the foremost
English-speaking
Prescott.'
student of
Americas
William
called
landing
on
has
forth
some
The five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's adverse comments both on the European impact
the original peoples of the Americas and on the treatment this episode has
received at the
hands
of
the most
analysis
militant of
those clamoring
Western historians. Prescott's treatment may not satisfy for politically correct history. In the final
and
he
accepts
he
argues that
for
all
its faults
or
Spanish takeover
of
was
Aztec,
But
and
Inca
practices of
human
when we turn
Europeans
we
and their
intellec
tual and
cultural
superiority
the conquered.
Rather
find
a sympathetic
interpretation,
340
Interpretation
discussion
of
and exhaustive
one
hand,
radically
critical
discussion
of
Spanish
Thus his
histories
should
encomiasts of
leave both the politically correct enthusiasts the Western way of life equally dissatisfied.
why Prescott's histories
"culture,"
the simple
An
additional reason
are
refreshing
at
this time
is in
"sacred,"
the concern
butions"
they
exhibit with
"unique"
with the
and with
the "contri
made what
by
peoples.
Prescott
of
enables us to
better
understand
"values"
the
He carefully sifts and weighs the available evidence in most detached picture of these civilizations as is humanly
ted.
cott assists
encounter
to arrive at the
possible.
his
readers
New
worlds.
They
will
be
reminded of
Aztecs
and
Incas
Europeans that be
went
they
will also
reminded of
how this
their
Incas
as
they first
arrived on
But
of
immediately
insight into
mean
important is the
"culture"
consideration
which
Prescott
another
"culture"
is
neither
Spanish early
nor
"indigenous."
Here I
the
of
late
eighteenth-
and
nine
provides an
in
be
held
The
by
"WASP"
mind or
is incapable
of appre
ciating the
example of
Prescott may serve to overcome the stereotypical image of the Vic torian progressivist liberal as a dogmatic booster of all things to do with the
modern
West
an
and with no
interests
or sympathies
By
providing
all
instance
of such a type
being
genuinely barbarism
accomplishments of
"semi-barbarous"
peoples,
time
being
West,
as
civilized
Prescott
dissolve
Anglo-American liberal
"Eurocentric."
contemporary uncertainty among social constructing of social models or defining the laws of social progress, Prescott's classic historical work on the Aztecs and studying Incas is a reminder of what "social or "comparative can be. Lack of a or scheme within which to handle historical details is not
scientists with respect to the
science" politics"
We may
add that
in light
of
the
"context"
his
problem.
more
recent
scholarship
of
and
gives
his
work a
his
being
guided
by
philosophy
of
history,
or more
broadly
stated,
by
an over
arching lated at
must
be
stipu
Prescott's
not
adherence to a
scheme"
or model of
lead him to
of
details. He does
onto a Proems-
try
dogmatically
to
Aztec
Inca society
Prescott's Conquests
tean
the
341
bed
To
make a
long
details
history
held to
the way to his philosophy of history, while his philosophy of points the way to the details. I would suggest that the fact that Prescott
such a
basic
outlook explains
why his
work stands
the test
of
time,
and
working
have been
unable
to add anything
fundamental to his
analysis.2
It is my
em
Prescott's
conception of civilization
"Hobbesian"
is that It is
of mod perhaps
liberalism
is
fundamentally
in
nature.
a truism to
Why
refer
say that all modem liberalism is ultimately Hobbesian in to Hobbes in particular when discussing Prescott, as there
somewhat or even much closer to or the
character. are
other writers
Mills,
who
The
answer
the rela
tionship between barbarism and civilization shines through very clearly in Pres cott's works in a way that is not perhaps so noticeable in other great figures in
the liberal tradition. This in turn
is
explained
by
the
although
he is writing in the nineteenth century, is writing about societies which were very close in many respects to the medieval-feudal-theocratic regimes against which Hobbes wrote. For Hobbes, civilization,
of
which
is ultimately
"completed"
by
the
flourishing
the mother
sciences,
the possibility of
mother of
Philosophy;
while
Commonwealth,
Peace,
and
Leasure."3
But leisure,
mately leads to turmoil as men begin to contend for their versions of right and wrong. In the earlier stages of civilization there was the direct force of the
conqueror, or the immediate authority
claims to
of
at a
later date it is
law
knowledge that back up rule. Priests, philosophers, they should rule because they are "in the
poets and prophets
scientists and
know."
In the
ancient
kingdoms the
backed up the
divinity
on earth.
kept in
peaceful subjugation
to established authority.
The
to
as
catch
in this
that the
real power
through
its
claims
to
wisdom
and so on,
beguiled the
both
them. As we
situation
see, this
fundamentally
Prescott's
assessment of the
in
pre-Columbian
America.
who
Macaulay was another historian of Prescott's time fundamentally Hobbesian ideal of civilization in his great
Now
deployed the
English
studies of
342
Interpretation
But
History.4
Macaulay
of
was writing roughly two hundred years Thus in his in the "New Political
Science."
after
Hobbes
overview of
English development he is
in Britain in "the
from the twelfth century up until since Hobbes's initial impact. Hence he
improvement."
only referring to the five Hobbes, but also to the two centuries
not
alludes
to English
of
leadership
desiderata
was
career of political
In
from
been
more or
less filled
by
the time of
Macaulay's
mind,"
writing, and
Macaulay himself,
then was
under
"liberal
Macaulay
been formed
writing about a highly civilized community that had the influence of Hobbes and those liberal thinkers who
the way down to Bentham and the Mills. He is not the earlier stages of the historical process which Hobbes
followed
therefore
could
after
him
all
focusing
on
"feel."
virtually
Hobbes himself
in danger
of
losing
his
head to
the
religious politics.
overcome.
Hobbes lived very much in the society he sought to But this is only conditionally so for Macaulay, who wanted "more of in the
"progressive"
same"
in
progress even as
he
wrote.
Prescott
by
contrast, in
turning
Incas
was
that
going back beyond his own and Macaulay's time to the kind of is more recognizable in Hobbes. Prescott is ambiguous as between
and the
"Americans"
but
not as
between
Protestant, liberal
West.5
In
discussing
may be
the
rise
of
the modem
personage
by
whom
to have been
whom this
first
arranged was
to Montesquieu as
refined,"
the philosopher
by
"system
subsequently
so much
and
to Gibbon as the historian who more than any other writer "exhibits more dis the full development of the principles of modem history." Thus we are tinctly
not surprised
Comte
sions,
cott
and
their
Theological-Metaphysical-Positivist divi
All
free"
and
are
arrangement, Pres
which
has
of
Mythology-Theogony-Philosophy.6
History
he labels "the
age of of
Mythology
may be
development
"It is the
existence,
by
conducted."
The
mythology
p.
"vary
with that of
(Mexico,
36), but it is
Prescott's Conquests
understand
343
his
place
in the
universe.7
It is
at
"a later
period,"
the stage of
Theogony,
outline"
bined into
a
the hands
of
the
poet."
What
was and
initially
Homer
age,
of
the
likes
of
Hesiod
beauty,
of all
the objects
of adoration
in
a credulous
the delight
(p. 36). What Herodotus means by succeeding Homer "created the theogony of the is that they
Greeks"
of their own
imaginations,
tion of
until
they had
the
them in
beauty
others."8
The "power
the phase of
poet"
of
Theogony
and
period."
reader, even
ened given
by
to
today, feels "his own conceptions of the angelic hierarchy quick those of the inspired artist, and a new and sensible form, as it were,
which
images
and undefined
before
him"
(Mex
nature
ico,
as
pp.
36-37).9
It
seems
the
most enlightened of
individual, by
"conceptions
or
it were,
furniture
his
soul
of
the
angelic
hierarchy."
and
Comedy
Paradise Lost
age succeeding that of Theogony, philosophy disclaims "alike the legends of the primitive age, and the
makes
itself felt. It
poetical embellish
ments of
At this stage, however, philosophy must "seek to succeeding shelter itself from the charge of impiety by giving an allegorical interpretation to the popular mythology, and thus to reconcile the latter with the genuine
the
one."
deductions divine
science"
of
(Mexico,
p.
37). It
still
appears
of
Philosophy
some
be
"impiety."
Society
has its
of
"rules"
backed up
by
form
authority.
But the
philosophers
traditional-
as
such
or
strictly
the
day
which of
religion
scientific.10
Religion is
longer
at odds with
science-philosophy because it has been improved and adapted to it. But at this point one has to be careful. Although Prescott would be inclined
to describe both the
of
medieval and
the
modern periods as
falling
within
the Age
Philosophy,
there is
nevertheless a
The
"accommodation"
philosophy
or reason
"sheltered
into the
"Fourth
or
open and
has
In the later period, however, rationalist thought comes more an increasingly direct effect on society. Thus the "Age of
Philosophy"
should
Stage"
really be divided into two periods. There is a kind of Philosophy" Hobbes" within the "Age of which is the "Age of
Enlightenment.'"1
the "Age of
In
order
need
to
consider
Prescott's interpretation
conception of world
of world political
history.
argument that
Prescott's
history
issues in the
"the
more
344
or
Interpretation
character of
less liberal
the social
institutions
of a
mined
by
its
position."12
geographical
The "progress
which
west."
of
freedom,
gious,
of
of
rights,
to
and
humanity,
based
has
on
gone
from
east
may be called the natural rights In Asia there are "extended despo
"nation
slaves."
tisms"
"a solitary
master"
his
rule over a
of
There
the monarch
is the
state and
"the
people
have
existenc
no political
There is
no constitution
properly
which
so called.
In
ress
in
science,"
inquiry,
Prescott
gion of of
humanity."
Christianity
freedom is
and
the
key
to progress.
Christianity
is the
"The free
spirit
elevate(s) the
by
the consciousness of
its
glorious ment.
and
religion
self-govern political
like Mahometanism
of
by
contrast,
was
basis for
blind
fatality"
who
had
(p.
their will,
master"
their responsibility,
These
considerations
cause
Prescott to
view
Europe
as
and explores
fearlessly
He lives
But
even
in the in
Old World
is
still not
truly free. He is
archy,
action,"
still
his "freedom
is
not yet
is distinguished
of the
above all
will
by
popular
freedom
and republicanism.
The
peoples
Old World
have to
can
undergo more
training
and experience
in
self-
government
before they
soil"
Opinion in Europe
needs
dom,
the "true
for
which
has been
marked out
by history
here
as
flowering
of
atmosphere
seems
has been
so
fatal to the arbitrary institutions of the Old World, as that [of the Old World] to the democratic forms of our In explaining why this should be Prescott points in the direction of the Puritan heritage. The Puritans found an "trace
of civilized man, or of
his
con
Under these
circumstances
of
they
could
were
in
a position to
who
"reduce to
practice"
the
"beautiful theories
speculation."
of
as
They
or
"verify
as
value"
the
of
visionary,
p.
denounced
dangerous in
their
("Review
of
Bancroft,"
"peak" especially America, is a kind of civilization denotes the final stage of human history,
79). For Prescott then, the West, and in history. The rise of Protestant liberal
which
is to say
the age of
freedom.
Prescott's Conquests
Unlike
some of the
345
the
early
in
Christianity
enemy of freedom and successful politics, Prescott, in the spirit of Locke per haps, describes true Christianity, which for him is obviously of the Protestant
kind,
as almost a prerequisite
for
successful politics.
Prescott
gives
the Refor
mation a rationalist
means
by
movement's
the Reforma
Church
in
its intellectual tradition, through the return to Scripture, succeeded the grip of Catholicism, which is to say of the mindset which distinguished the Inquisition and the Conquistadores, on the European mind.
and
breaking
Once this grip was broken the new reason and the new liberty could flower forth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But here Prescott is close to nineteenth-century philosophy in general, which put a lot of emphasis on the Reformation as the key event in the advance of human freedom. Writing after
about prets
now
of
the Reformation as a
"breakthrough"
liberalism's working on Christianity, Prescott inter for the kind of society in which we
gave an electric shock
glorious
under
Reformation
to the
intellect,
men
long
priesthood.
It taught
to
distrust authority, to trace effects back to their causes, to search for themselves, and to take no guide but the reason which God had given them. It taught them
to claim the
right
of
free inquiry,
as
their
of
inalienable birthright,
p.
and with
free
inquiry, freedom
Now in the
action"
of
("Review
Bancroft,"
77).
14
particular case of
for Prescott
were not
New Englander, he knows he must address the fact that they liberals and were inclined to presecute those of other persuasions just
as a
Europe.15
vigorously as did the old authorities back in here end up being an "end justifies the
as
Prescott's
apologetics out
means"
argument.
As it turns
the
"zeal
requisite
for
great revolutions
in
church and
state, is rarely
attended
by
The Puritans themselves were not exemplars charity for difference of of liberal politics but somehow they served the historical purpose of broadening The first set this practice. They were instruments of the "cunning of
History."
opinion."
tlers may
practice,"
but for
all
that
they did
when
bring
their
living
principle of
freedom,
which would
survive,
avoid
had
away."
passed
It
was
serving
that
in itself "an
assertion of
"They
came
for
conscience's
Freedom
p.
79).16
of political
institutions they
at once
("Review
Bancroft,"
of
Prescott, then,
ism's
subscribes
to a kind of
version of
the "Weber
thesis."
Liberal
fundamentally
history
attributable
if
of the
stage of world
consummated
America,
the
foundation
history
its
presence
felt? Let
Prescott's Incas.
346
Interpretation
that we must
be
careful
institutions
different
In the
point of view
from that in
nations."
case of
emanated
from the
sovereign violate
divine commission, and was possessed of a divine nature. To law was not only to insult the majesty of the throne, but it was the held
In
a
sacrilege."
the
religion. with
There
law
and
legislation
concerned
solely
"concrete"
the community's
of
were a re
flection
rate
divine
or cosmic order.
The community
of
really
a realm sepa
from
but
"claimed
on a alike
divine
original
their empire,
[their] laws
divine sanction, and [their] domestic institutions and foreign wars were directed to preserve and propagate their In short, "Religion was the
faith."
basis
of their
polity, the very condition as it were, of their social existence. The the Incas in its essential principles was a
theocracy"
government of
776).17
(Peru,
p.
or
they
which
puerile."
"Scarce
their traditions
is worthy
of note or
man."
history
own
of
For Prescott
infall
ible
standard of advancement
in
civilization
of
is the
past
comprehensiveness of a soci
or
ety's
knowledge
of the
details
its
"anthropology."
referring to as it might be called. Prescott sums up the Peruvian system of law by saying that the "simplicity and severity of the Peruvian code may be thought to infer a state of society but little By this he means
Incas'
Hence he
"semi-civilized"
the
"historiography"
advanced."
that
of those complex
interests
community."
a civilized
The
Incas'
lack
of advancement
is
seen
having
enough
in
the science of
crime"
legislation
pp.
to economize
penalties to
a
(Peru,
the
"mild
despotism,"
institutions
these
Sparta."
And
indeed,
institutions, "though
nature"
counterparts.18
But for all this Prescott does not describe the Incas as being simply barbaric. On the contrary, they were highly advanced in certain respects. While the "in stitutions of Lycurgus were designed for a those of Pern, "although petty
state,"
such"
seemed
"to have
an
indefinite
power of
expansion,
to the most
flourishing
its
accommodation
to change of
circum-
Prescott's Conquests
stances we see proofs of contrivance that argue no slight advance
zation"
347
civili
in
(Peru,
p.
752).
19
The
extent
of
the
Incas'
advancement
in "public
administration"
be
overlooked
in Prescott's
city
view.
They
had
board
of commissioners
in the
main
which was
"well in
in the
resources of
...
register was
kept
of all
throughout the country, and exact returns of the actual population were made to
the government
every
year.
...
At
certain
intervals,
view of
of
nature of
in short,
were also
land"
works"
program.
They
"covered the
.
. .
with
with
memorials of the
past, remains
of
moun
tains,
great
degree
of science
him
by
their
number, the massive character of the materials, and the grandeur of the
design"
Incas had
moved well
beyond
described
by
Hobbes.20
As to economics, the Inca agricultural or property laws arranged for a new division of land every year whereby the "possessions of the tenant were in
creased or such a
diminished according to the numbers in his law in other countries, Prescott says, has "after
events."
family."
The
. . .
operation of
a time
This
"giving
way"
to nature means
allowed
things to their
natural
This "natural
results of
from the
"superior intelligence
strong
p.
even
others."
Lycurgus
luxury
stands
and
(Peru,
(to
time, and melted away before the spirit of 756). Here we see clearly that Prescott under
with respect
there to
of
be
a natural
inequality
to the "faculties
for
the
property"
paraphrase
a sign of a
is to
control these
faculties
or
avarice"
or
to repress
"luxury
and
in the
name of permanent
equality
"virtue."
According
principle
first
"the
the
the
of agricultural
development. In his
permanent
view
desire for
Peruvian
improving
the
is "natural to the
law be
such.
proprietor,"
and
by
Practically
speaking,
however,
law This
by
change."
for the
into
a proprietor
for
life."
improvement
least
possible.
But,
as
348
Interpretation
was
far from
were
the case
not
better his
ever
condition.
His labors
industrious, he
one
than
possessions,
himself
social
and universal
motive to
great
die."
bettering
with
one's
lot,
was
was
lost
upon
him. The
he
was
law
human
for him. As he
bom,
so
to
This
situation provides
Prescott
between
"Rousseauean"
virtue on
the one
hand,
In Pern "No
man could a
be rich,
be
poor
...
prog but
enjoy,
and
did enjoy
competence."
Ambition,
discontent,
those
being
which
be
He
and
moved
before him,
in
his
children were to
The
above statement
leaves
us
was
very
alive to
depends
dis
"avarice,"
"the love
change"
of
and even a
"morbid
spirit of
content."
One does It
not
have to
reflect
long
here to be
reminded that
Prescott
was an
American
was
and
character.
Tocqueville
of
corners of perhaps
Europe"
Despite
or
because
their populations
with
distinguished these places, poverty tended to be placid of countenance and light of spirits. But
and
enlightened"
ignorance
Americans, Tocqueville
for this
contrast,"
saw that
"a
cloud
habit in
ually
their
hung
upon
their
brow."
and almost
sad,
even
pleasures."
"The
chief reason
comers"
he explains, is
that the
while
residents of the
"remote
the
brooding
,
over advantages
endure,"
possess"
(De
the
mocracy in
perspective
America, vol. 2 p. 144). That which Tocqueville saw from of France, Prescott could see from the perspective of Pern.
Despite these
curious parallel
that the
is
nation
radical differences there is one respect in which there is a between Prescott's Peruvians and their later counterparts, and building. Like the United States of America, the "great fabric of arose
Peruvian
Empire"
"by
degrees"
and
in
so
doing
"gave security to
all."
Moreover,
common
under
"the influence
of a common
religion,
common
language,
tribes"
and
government"
"numerous independent
and even
hostile
"knit together
as one
nation, animated
sovereign."
by
a spirit of
devoted
poses of
loyalty
to
its
com-
Prescott's Conquests
mitted
349
to permanent
social change or
"social
motion,"
as some
have
called the
distinguishing
institutions
nevolent
feature
of
Western societies,
quiet"
while
the "ultimate
aim of
[the
Inca]
be
was
domestic
a
(Peru,
love
pp.
was a
despotism,
kind
even as all
were required
domestic tranquility
and commitment
to a warrior foreign policy, the Incas were at the opposite pole from commercial
civilization.
They had
piety
psychology
reminiscent of the
Christian Europe
of
the
Middle Ages
historians.21
the very worst political psychology from the point of all liberal
"The life
of
long
crusade against
the
infidel,
to
Sun, worship brutish superstitions, and impart to them the blessings of a well-regulated gov mission even as it was "the mission of the Chris This was the
spread wide the
the
ernment."
Incas'
invaded
empire"
(their)
the
(Peru, Spaniards,
p.
776).
Psychologically
character were
whom
Prescott
izes
as above all
full
of
The inquisitor-conquistadores
ultimately
extending their authority over another government of aggression, persecution, and superstition. In Prescott's presentation, the encounter between the
bigotry
makes
Spanish
and the
denizens
of
reminds of
this
comparison most
of
the Aztecs.
In summing up the animating core of Aztec "The tutelary deity of the Aztecs was the god of
to martyr
civilization
war."
Prescott
states that
The Aztec
soldier sought
god.
or the
Christian
crusader,"
"earnestly invoking
(Mexico,
p.
the
holy
gion
in the
human
butchery"
23). Their
making
while
science."
though, while a trade, was "not elevated to the rank of a ical implication here is that warlike peoples tend to lack
more
The
paradox
a science of
war,
civilized,
Aztecs'
which
is
it.
46).22
The in
character"
was
human
(Mexico,
part of
p.
the
extreme of
barbarism brought
as
when
the
Aztecs
human flesh
teeming
attended
with
delicious beverages
sexes"
delicate viands,
says
prepared with
art, and
by
both
(p.
48).23
Prescott
ble in Aztec society because "[w]retched Indeed, "the most fiendish the "voice of
nature."
superstition
has the
power
to stifle
passions of
religion"
have been those kindled in the name ence of the priesthood "became
lowed for
more"
of and
unbounded,"
it
"bel
human
victims
limiting
the authority
350
of
Interpretation
matters,"
the priests to
where
spiritual
his
opinion
to theirs,
they
were
least
competent
to give it.
The
whole
nation,
from
bowed their
kind
of
tyranny,
to
that of blind
(p. 50).
note that such remarks are not meant not well
But it is
that the
of
key
importance to
process
imply
The
even
civilizational
had
begun
amongst
the Aztecs.
community"
they
practiced
Aztec
the
for "the
Mon
rights both
arch
persons,"
of
property
and
judiciary
independent
and
of the
(a
measure
"worthy
of an enlightened a
people"),
Aztec law
punished
"(o)ffences
progress
property,"
against private
civilization"
a considerable
in
Prescott
sees
it,
judging
they
the practices of their conquerors. The Spaniards too managed to combine at one
and the same
time
advancement
in
civilization and
While
the
Aztecs
tendencies,
presents
Spaniards
were
way
as
and
enlightenment as the
heap"
Archbishop
of
Mexico
"His
made a "mountain-
of
Aztec
greater
countryman,
Archbishop Ximenes,
in Granada, twenty
had
Arabic manuscripts,
two more signal
years
achieve
triumphs,
than
and
by
the annihilation of so
curious monuments of
human
ingenuity
learning."
careful not
be
likely
to contain any
truth or
discovery
progress."
comfort and
But he is in
no
overwhelmed.
These
of
records
previous
history
is higher
the
nation"
this respect
for,
or openness
to the
history
of
other peoples
iards to
Aztecs in
view of
development. WTrat they should have done as conquerors and did do reveals a weakness in their claim that as bearers of
occupation of the empires of the
plate with
they in fact
contem
civilization their
New World
was
indignation
the cruelties
conquerors,"
this
"indig
nation out
is
qualified with
contempt,
trampling
mankind."
the
spark of well
knowledge,
"We may
doubt,"
tion,
(Mexico,
Aztec
p.
50).
The
then
is
not the of
level
of
fanaticism
raise
and
bigotry
the
the enlightened
in contemplating
"in its
generous straggle to
itself from
a nation of
barbarism,
in the
scale
Prescott's Conquests
civilization"
351
fanati
of cism and
(Mexico,
that
p.
were so
blinded
by
bigotry
they had
even
efforts.
They
sought
only to
destroy
all vestiges of
system,
though
they
had
allowed
"the
estab
lishment
of the modem
Inquisition,"
an
thousands, by a death more painful than the Aztec was in some ways more horrible than the practices
brother
against
of the
Aztecs. It "armed
brother,
while
stay the
march of
and setting its burning seal upon the lip, did more to improvement than any other scheme ever devised by human
cunning."
And
Aztec human
sacrifice was
victims with
poor
con
next"
(Mexico,
p.
51).25
Prescott here
and their
how
near a
thing it is
with
him in
deciding
"it
civilization and
the
Spaniards land
and theirs.
of cannibalism
forced
Ultimately
beneficently
ordered
by
Providence
rescue
that the
should
be delivered
over
superstitions that
daily
of
wider,
debasing
Their
institutions from
conquest."
conquerors
Inquisition"
but they
of
are saved
radiance"
of their
Christianity
be
History"
day
shine
forth
fanaticism
extinguished"
should
of
(p.
52).26
"cunning
Incas
could
eventually transform
while
"humanitarianism,"
the
Aztecs
and
The
answer
here is
"metaphysical"
or cosmological
difference be
cultures.
The
whole nature of
it
was conceived
differently by
of
Aztec cosmology
such,
which
curiosity
the
common
civilization,"
is "to lift
But
at of
past,
future."
bottom
lifting
Ultimately
ahead.
stretching
We
and
and our
limited
distance in
direction.
nations of
the
as
Old
Continent,"
sought
"relief from
eternity."
idea
of
But
it
turns out,
they in
their premodern
postmodern
by
Nietzsche, in his
context,
352
of
Interpretation
his radically historical consciousness, i.e., by means of the Eternal Return. The Aztecs proceeded to break eternity "up into distinct cycles, or periods of time, each of several thousand years duration. There were four of these cycles,
and at the end of swept
each,
by
family
was
from the earth, Prescott sums up the Aztec view very beautifully: "They looked forward confidently to another such catastrophe (as had happened before) to
and the sun out
blotted
again
rekindled."
take place like the preceding, at the close of a cycle, when the sun was to
effaced
be
the
earth,
the dark
globe"
(Mexico,
72-73).27
or reminiscent of the
the
cyclical nature of
the
Aztecs'
chronology.
fore
useful
classical
Greek thought
which
to
overlap.
Although the
ancients understood
very
family
to clan, to
improvement,
or
and
the
in these
to the possibility of
science, at the
time
they
never
lost
sight of the
possibility necessarily
and
world"
of the
and
nature,
includes
or
destructive
a
phenomena
as
floods, famines,
plagues, fires
earthquakes.
With luck
few
stragglers
may
in
caves
in
"tens
(Plato, Laws
again arrive at
become
extinct.28
aspect to classical
thought
which
distinguishes
Enlighten
it from the
ment and
"anthropocentric"
and
historically literary
he knew
influence in
inclined to their
very
reminiscent of
he inev
was not
itably
was
in the
course of
his
work on
Incas, he
disposed to
fresh
revealing
of
angle of approach
to
leaves
inevitability
he
the
human
to
race's
on
disappearance,
who was
temporality
human existence, in
"ancients"
order
focus
Plato,
inclined
to
fund
of wisdom.
For Socrates
and
or tales
from the
ancient
days,
which
society's great
prog
very important
proper genuine
and provide
the
key
understanding was much more limited, are to placing human and social progress in its
not expand on the
context.29
kinship
Incas
view of
Prescott's Conquests
the
353
the
human
situation.
We
are of
forced
has
to wonder why.
Here
we must consider
influence
In the
on
his thought
in the
whole or
the cosmic
some sense
he
constitutes a part.
or
This
scheme
is in
important than
...
the best
thing in
the world
for there
divine in
e.g. most
machean
conspicuously the bodies of which the heavens are Ethics 1141a 22-23, 1142b 1-2). But the Bible inverts this
man
(Nicho-
order of
priority. and
is
placed at
the
heavenly bodies,
Incas,
of
are
the
divine, have
life,
on
and
The
deserving heavenly bodies are created on the fourth day, even after the seas and vegetation. They exist simply for the sake of man. Man, and not the heavens is
the peak of creation.
worship.30
Life does
ultimately depend
them.
placement of man at
the
top is already
a modem
a given.
because
said
of
rationalist,
it
might
be
his
anthropocentrism or
humanism
as
comes
not so much
from
modem
Baconian
enlightenment
philosophy
from
Aztecs
cal
Incas through
will
biblical lens,
on
albeit modified
by
modem philosophi
thought, he
condition
focus
what
in terms
of the
human
points
here
itself
to concerning
man's situation
in the
universe as a whole.
The humanism
on
or anthropocentrism of
Prescott,
modem
philosophy
the
and the
Bible
the one
hand,
and
stands opposed
"pagans"
to the
cosmocentrism of
Aztecs-Incas, Plato-Aristotle
and
the
on the other.
classical centrism
"prime"
Greeks
belong
Thus for Prescott, the Aztecs and Incas in essentially the same category. Their common
civilization"
the
cosmo
is the
or
product
of the
"infancy
after all
of
as
compared to
its
maturity
which
comes above
stage
of civilization reflects
conclusions
that may
be
of man as the
or selfish
highest thing in
or passive
creation.
fortitude"
indulgence,
and
antiquity,"
"variously
taught
by
the
various sects of
in the life
of the
was
Aztecs
being
best
answered p.
by
life
of active useful
(Biographical
Critical Miscellanies,
77).
Prescott's
view of
an ascent
long way from the days when he used to the sun, as did the pre-Columbians. More look up in pious awe and worship prospect that humankind could relapse over, for Prescott there is no immediate
higher, to the highest. Man has
354
into
Interpretation
such a passive or
fatalist
attitude again.
The
modem epoch
is in
sui generis
susceptible.
in its
Once
attainment of
the civilized
heights
of which
human
is
of
a certain
reached
there appears to
be
kind
solid
cott
floor
or
foundation that
dwell
is
not concerned to
retrogression.31
Pres
when seen
in
the light
does
eternity"
and a on
depends
his
not
forgetting of the infinity of focusing on the here and now. reflecting intensely on the primary
fundamental
His
questions of a
building
on
concerning the universe, time and the human home for himself in the form of civilized commu
about the things required
depends
his thinking
for this
possibility that
race over
Humankind
needs to shut
its
eyes
to
disappearance
and reappearance of
the human
of civilization appear as
only
one
instance,
which
is
no more significant
than
any
other such
instance, in
as
does
not exercise
any
control. must
As
long
infinity
live,
its
accoutrements must
choly"
the
"busy-ness"
intensity
of
highest
necessarily
a
depends.32
Social
will,
stiffening
of the spine so
of civilization
really counts, and therefore with the utmost seriousness. We get a clearer sense of Prescott's vantage point and the
likely
reasons
for
his
"refusal"
sayings,"
as
did Plato,
when we consider
his
view of
the nature of
Western
science.
Far from
of the
looking back,
It
and
forming
itself slavishly
on the
past, it is characteristic
European intellect to be
ever on
basis
of new ones.
passes onward
succession of and
links,
as
from truth to truth, connecting the whole by a great chain of science which is to encircle
of
universe.
The light
learning
is
labors
of art.
New
communication
both
New
facilities
devised for
subsistence.
and
inconceivably
multiplied,
Personal comforts, of every kind, are brought within the reach of the poorest. Secure
a nobler region than
of
demands
taste,
and a
(Mexico,
a
p.
77)
fundamental
kind
of
harmony
or parallelism of
intel
lectual
This
the premodern
Prescott's Conquests
or pre-Enlightenment
355
thinkers.
They
admittedly very late stage, the intellectual progress of the few would not be directly linked to the changing conditions of society. Rather, the enlightened few would always be observing the progress (or regress) of civili
at a
zation
be
from their
intellectually
at
advantaged
some of
but
more or
less
powerless position.
But
modem
philosophy,
least in
and
society"
its permutations, dispensed with this for the sake of conquering nature and
Prescott's historical thought falls within this mod making it serve man's em horizon. He sees intellectual and social progress as directly linked and as
having
And this is
all
happiness
CONCLUSION
Prescott tions
about
suggests that
it is
is
natural
how
the whole
will
animated or
with
of
"ultimate
reality"
vary widely in every human community. Thus it is that the histories of the various commu nities in which human beings have gathered over time reveal the erroneous along which mankind can wander. We know these paths to be erroneous because in the final analysis only one variation of the option, that of the mod
paths
West, has
shown
minds such as
Prescott's
or unciv
wondering
done,
the
semi-
ilized
have been
well-being than the condition which awaits him once "the scale has been climbed to its very top rung. In adopting this critical the history of the expanding West, Prescott implicitly seems to
civilization's
of
stance towards
reveal
Western
self-
truest advantage.
This
civilization's
proneness
to
radical
conclusion
in the
order of
to nature,
if
not
inevitable, is
of the
superior
Aztecs'
to all
known
genesis
belief in
millennial
cycles
humanity's
gain
repreated
. . .
destruction
and regener
ation as
being
It is
in their desire to
perhaps
"relief
from the
oppressive
idea Of
eternity."
fair to
suggest
that the
liberal,
progressivist
historian's
interest free
to universal,
need,
Considering
whether were
the
subsequent
same
human
progressive
liberal
and a
half
he wrote, it is
interesting
were
to reflect on
his
assessment of
he writing his
356
the
Interpretation
"metaphysics"
of the pre-Columbians a
and
Amen
Song"
of
song that he too should begin to Nietzsche's Zarathustra: "Oh, how should I
lust
after
Never
this
yet
and
the
nuptial
ring
of
rings,
I
the
ring
of recurrence?
woman
from
whom
wanted
children, unless it
you
be
woman whom
eternity.
For I love
eternity.'"*
NOTES
to Prescott's study of the conquests came from such distinguished writers and H. H. Quarterly Review historians Milman, "Prescott's History of the Conquest of 73(1843): 187-235, and "Prescott's Conquest of Quarterly Review 81(1849): 215-48; S. M. Edinburgh Review 81(1845): 228-49; Francois Guizot, Phillips, "Prescott's Conquest of
1. First
reactions
Mexico,"
as:
Peru,"
Mexico"
"Philip
II
and
Motley,"
and
1-45; Theodore
Mexico,"
"Prescott's Conquest of Massachusetts Quarterly Review 2(1849): 215-48, 437-70; Count Adolphe de Circourt, "William Bibliotheque Universelle et Revue Suisse 4(1859): 597-620. The main biogra Hickling William H. Prescott phy of Prescott was by his lifelong friend and colleague George Ticknor, Life of (New York: Merrill and Baker, 1863). Prescott drew attention at the tum of this century from Rollo
Mr. Prescott
Historian"
as an
Ogden, William Hickling Prescott (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1904); Harry Thurston Peck, William Hickling Prescott (New York: Macmillan, 1905) and John Spencer Bassett, The Middle Group of American Historians (New York, Macmillan, 1917). His work began to be revisited as early as the New England thirties by Philip Means, "A Re-examination of Prescott's Account of Early Quarterly 4(1931): 645-62, but especially in the fifties by Donald Ringe, "The Artistry of Pre scott's Conquest of New England Quarterly 26(1953): 454-76; Robert Arthur Hump hreys, William Hickling Prescott; The Man and the Historian (London: Hispanic and LusoBrazilian Councils, 1959); and David Levin, History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley,
Peru," Mexico,"
and
University Press, 1959). More recently there has been a biogra Harvey Gardiner, William Hickling Prescott: A Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), and a study by Donald C. Darnell, William Hickling Prescott (Boston: Twayne Pub
Parkman (Stanford: Stanford
phy
by
C.
lishers, 1975).
2.
life
Gary fully
M. Feinman describe
speaks as though
nothing fundamental has been discovered about Aztec Prescott's great studies: "Scholars are begin
components that comprised the
on the
Aztecs,"
ning to
diverse
basin
of
Mexico
at
the eve of
Spanish
Conquest"
("New Perspectives
Journal of Historical
Geography
they
want
14(1988): 67). In
an
in this field
cannot make
up their
are
minds whether
infinite
absorption
in details
or to move
in the direction
Renato I. Rosaldo, for example, says that although "detailed must nevertheless "be balanced by periodic attempts at
synthesis"
("Afterword,"
Collier
et
and
464). While attempting to give an overview of the societies, Elizabeth M. Brumfiel observes that the
"the entry
Warfare,"
scholarly
trends exemplify to a
of
Marxist
ideology"
and
Latin American Research Review 25[1990]: 257). But for Nigel Davies this development Davies' is far from welcome. reason for objecting to a Marxist analysis of these societies is that
attempts to
find
too much of a
"temptation to distort
"the
the
facts"
in
order
to
scheme."
They
by
limited
number of
factors that
core, or substratum,
search
to certain
.
others."
According
of
to
Davies, "the
for
an overall model
delusion"
(Nigel
neo-Marxist
Oklahoma Press, 1987], p. 125). But while approach might force the facts into a preconceived
Prescott's Conquests
"model,"
357
broad
Davies
is
a need
for
"synthesis"
and
generalizations.
He is forced to
while
if it issues in the
"core"
uncovering
of some
"substratum''
be
other
than
some picture of a
or
including
our own.
In
it is that
all this
anthropology would take us. General conclusions of enduring interest seem few and far between. 3. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), chap. 46, p. 683. 4. Compare Leviathan, chap. 13, p. 186, with Lord Macaulay, Historical Essays (London: Col
lins Clear-Type Press, n.d.), pp. 385-86. 5. Prescott arrests our attention as a
century precisely because
members of
this school
Europe"
"History
of
or
of the early nineteenth virtually par for the course for such as Mackintosh, Macaulay, Hallam, Guizot and others to produce a a "History of showing Western society's passage through the
of
member of the
"historical It
was
school"
his
England"
indeed
produced
The
History
of Ferdinand
and
following
William Robertson's
History
history
and
society
of
its coming
sphere
under
European dominance. He
a
history
of the
Western Hemi
over
by
detailed
"Preface,"
History
History
Mexico
or
pp.
Mill says that "any general theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of in human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy of The Essential Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Max Lerner [New York: Bantam, 1961], p. 99). In his in the and Preface to Mexico, Prescott explains that he invested great
history"
("Autobiography," "labor" "time" "Introduction" "Appendix"
and
(which he
says
"properly belongs in the Introduction"), where his discussion of the appears. These parts of the work he says, were designed to show "the
Mexicans"
true
(Mexico,
p.
5).
of
of
As
Nietzsche is the
important."
man out
in
modern
human history. For him, "There is a great ladder of In the first stage "one these are the most
stage
philosophy in his tripartite breakdown religious cruelty, with many rungs; but three
sacrificed sacrficed
human beings to
god."
one's
In
two,
which
is "the
mankind,"
moral epoch of
"one
instincts."
And in
from cruelty
and
against oneself
nothing"
(Beyond Good
Evil,
trans. Walter
of
history
is the story
the
progressive
cruelty of stage one, which would be the humanitarianism of the modern West. 7. Hobbes had
make
stage of the
of the of
the
said that so
despite the
"seed"
common
of religion,
used
local
for "ceremonies
ridiculous to
Greeks"
another"
different, that those which are (Leviathan, chap. 12, pp. 172-73).
Herodotus's for his
claim
by
one
man, are
says that
assertion not
to be taken too
nation"
that Hesiod and Homer "created the theogony of the literally, since it is hardly possible that any man should (Mexico, p. 36). What Prescott intends by this remark is
by
Thomas De Quincey.
Discussing
Plato's
plans
for the
poets
poets
in the Repub
so prodi
lic, De Quincey
says:
"Strange, indeed,
any
whatever,
having
created a national
. . .
The fact really was, that the human intellect had been something independent of the mythology. for some time outgrowing its foul religions; clamorously it began to demand some change; but how little it was able to effect that change for itself, is evident from no example more than
Plato"
(Leaders in Literature With a Notice of Traditional Errors Affecting Them [Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1863], pp. 227-28). It seems that for nineteenth-century writers like Prescott and De
358
'
Interpretation
the broad "forces of
History"
Quincey
one or
have
a greater
explanatory
of the
power
than the
literary
genius of
feeling
beauty
of a cloud
lighted
by
the
is
in
no
hindrance to my
knowing
.
is
laws
("Autobiography,"
a state of suspension
93).
10. This may be said to be the tradition of natural theology which stretched from Socrates (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.4, 5-7; Plato, Republic bk 2, Laws bk 10, Gorgias, end) to Cicero (De
Natura Deorum
2.4)
to
Paley
(Natural
Theology [1802]).
on
the Prejudices of
Morality,
trans. R.J.
Discovery
12. William Prescott, "Review The North American Review (Jan., 1841), of the
University Press, 1982), Aphorism #189, p. 190. of George Bancroft's History of the United States
p.
From the
75.
in Edward Weeks and 13. See Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Professor at the Breakfast the Atlantic (Boston: Little Brown, 1957), pp. 31-33. Hundred Years Jubilee: One Flint, eds., of Emily 14. "This is the essence of the Reformation: Man is in his very nature destined to be (G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans J. Sibree [New York: Dover, 1956], p. 417. Sir
free"
Table,"
James Mackintosh
human authority,
to
says that
warfare
against
Rome had
struck a
blow
against all
and
unconsciously disclosed to
mankind
that
they
were
entitled,
or rather
bound,
(The
form
and utter
most of all on
the most
deeply interesting
subjects"
Progress of Ethical Philosophy [Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1835], p. 308). Lord Brougham says that one cannot understand modern Europe without considering "[T]he effect of the reformed faith, wherever it was established, in emancipating the human mind and causing reason
alone
matters"
(Political "The
. .
Philosophy
in
1844],
2,
pp.
says that
renunciation
Europe,
of
theological opinions so
subjects, a
Philosophy
fail to encourage, on all other congenial freedom of (The Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political Since the Revival of Letters in Europe [Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1835], p.
long
consecrated
by
time
could not
inquiry"
"transvalues"
the view of
liberal philosophy
on the
Reformation: "That Lu
ther's Reformation succeeded in the North suggests that the north of Europe was retarded compared
(The
Gay Science,
have
p.
195;
see also
disaster in that it
tide of
humanity
Lawrence, Studies in Classical American Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, in Major Critical Essays (Harmonds 1971], pp. 9-11; George Bernard Shaw, "The Sanity of worth: Penguin, 1986), p. 337; Ralph Barton Perry, Puritanism and Democracy (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1944), p. 358; G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 8; Egerton Ryerson, The Loyalists of America and Their Times, 2 vols. (Toronto: William Briggs, 1880], vol. 1, pp. 12ff.; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), vol. 1, pp. 33-46. 16. See Goldwin Smith, Lectures on Modern History (Oxford: J. H. and Jas. Parker, 1861), p.
Art,"
17.
17. Terence N. polity
of
duction,"
D'Altroy
be
a
observes that
"Depending
was considered to
feudal, totalitarian,
Utopian, communistic
or monarchic
("Intro
as one
his
Ethnohistory 34[1987]: 3). Unlike Prescott D'Altroy key possible adjectives describing the Inca regime.
does
not
include
"theocratic"
18. See Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (New York: Hafner Press, 1949), pp. Education," and Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Indian in G. M. Young, ed., Macaulay: Prose and Poetry (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1967), pp. 722-24.
316-30,
sufficient to confide
in for
we
our
by
Enemy
feare"
certain
20. In the
state of nature
Hobbes
"no Instruments
p.
force"
removing
such
(Leviathan,
of
13,
186).
by
any
Christian aristocracy may stand for the interpretation of Hobbes. 'To the union of constraint and obedience with
Prescott's Conquests
the
359
bravery
. . .
inculcated
by
constant engagement
in
warlike
pursuits,
was added
the superstitious
and pen with civil
clergy,
full
All these
circumstances
introduced
ceremony independence
of
the
on
be
expected
. . .
lords 22).
love
of conquest engrafted
fury of their onset was such as might by their priests as well as their feudal
vol.
zeal"
(Political Philosophy,
1,
pp. 321
22. Prescott
tated"
goes so
far kind
as
"greatly facili
helped
by
"the
ferocity
acquire a
of character engendered of
by
their sanguinary
rites."
Human
sacrifice
military virtue, the loss of which amongst modern Europeans was Machiavelli's despair. Prescott notes of Machiavelli's Discourses, 2.2, wherein antiquity's greater
the
Aztecs to
"liberty"
is
explained
in terms
that
of paganism's
world,"
this
it "contains
some
ingenious than
Christianity"
(Mexico,
p.
52
n.
36).
producing
man"
"Cruelty
is
of mankind";
"Of
exaltation,
sacrifice which
human
develop
are
is
quite
while
Christianity
is less
so.
happy by
the sight of the torment of others, while at the same time all
high
culture
is the
(See The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann [New York: Vintage Books, 1967], n, 5-7, pp. 64-69; Daybreak, #77; and Beyond Good and Evil, #229). See also Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief (Harmonds worth: Penguin, 1965), pp. 228-30. 24. Prescott says of the Aztec society that the "degree of civilization which they had reached, as inferred by their political institutions, may be considered, perhaps, not much short of that en joyed by our Saxon ancestors, under (Mexico, p. 33).
product of cruelty.
Alfred"
25. "The
ideas in
remote
regions,
inhabited
by
different
races
furnish[es]
gether the
distant families
nations"
of
(Mexico,
p.
38
engine of oppression
mind"
ever
by
man,
not
so terrible
body
as on the
with
(Biographical
and
Crusoe
seems
to agree entirely
Prescott's
view.
Critical Miscellanies, p. 576). Robinson He remarks to a Spaniard whom he had Spanish colonies, "that I had
rather
he
be
and
Inquisition"
devoured alive, than fall into the merciless claws of the Priests, and (Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, ed.
which
Angus Ross [Harmonds worth: Penguin, 1965], p. 243). 26. Ross Hassig is loath to enter into the question bian
studies condition
is
for Prescott, i.e., the relationship between, and comparative advantages for the human of, civilization on the one hand, and barbarism on the other. He approaches the world of
assumption
Expansion
and
Riddle,"
Oklahoma Press, 1988] p. 267). University in Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann
of was a
p.
158. Zarathustra
p.
Persian,
of
and
a cycle of one
hundred
years"
and
twenty
(Mexico,
65
n.
difficulty
so
in studying
prehensible
time,
history, [was]
Thus Marx's philosophy of history would have been incom to the Aztecs. "Marx inherited the Judeo-Christian notion in that respect; he thought in beginning and ending of history, in which, in a new Golden Age, proletarian power idyllic
state of man's tribal
own."
believe, like
the
Aztecs, in
day
succumb
pp. 8, Vintage, (August,
and the
fight
be
125). Compare Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Progress?" The Atlantic Monthly Aph #341, p. 274, with Lord Bryce, "What is
1974),
1907),
p.
154.
360
Interpretation
of
28. One
"Besides the
the
obvious similarities
divinity
of the
between New World cosmogony and that of the Greeks heavenly bodies. Describing the Incas, Prescott says
worship in
some
was
that
Sun, [they]
the
way
Moon, his
. .
sister-wife; the
Stars,
revered
heavenly
attends so of
train,
them, Venus,
Sun,
whom
he
(Peru, pp. 778-79). Plato argues for the divinity closely in his rising and in his the heavenly bodies in Laws, 899b; Aristotle expresses this view in the Nicomachean Ethics,
and
setting"
1141M-8 There is
of the
ists."
Physics, 196a33-34;
here to
go
and
Cicero
makes
Disputations, 1.28.
no space
into the
philosophers'
context of the
defense
of
divinity
same
heavenly bodies,
as all ancient
bound up
"material
But it is important to
in the
camp
except one.
As
one scholar
heavenly
p.
in
all
ancient
religions
255). We
keep
in
mind
philosophy
of the
and
modern
historical
Prescott, for
his modern,
enlightenment
Bible.
says that the
Aristotle
...
are
likely
to have
been
today"
(Politics 1296a6).
an old
Plato sums up the point directly in the Timaeus, when he has Solon: "There have been and will be again, many destructions of
causes; the greatest have been brought about
Egyptian
priest
say to
by
agencies also
innumerable
causes"
arising out of many of fire and water, and other lesser ones by Plato's Laws 676a-c, and Lucretius, De
Sense,"
mankind
Consider Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral ophy and Truth (New Jersey: Humanities International, 1979), 29. North America,
French
p.
79.
Roy Harvey Pearce, speaking generally of American students of the indigenous says that "They could learn of the law of progress from any number
who were so
learned
and
from those
the works of the Pearce describes the such as Francis century Scotch historians and writers on Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, Lord Karnes and William Robertson, as being the con
upon and verified
built
"grand intention
of the eighteenth
society,"
"a sociology of progress, a theory which would make comprehensible at once social (The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of stability and social Civilization [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965], pp. 155-56, 82-83.27.) "If the Greeks lived in the infancy of civilization, the contemporaries of our day may be said to have reached its prime. The same revolution has taken place as in the growth of an individual. The vivacity of the imagination has been blunted, but reason is matured. The credulity of youth has given way to habits of cautious inquiry, and sometimes to a phlegmatic scepticism a new
struction of
growth"
formed. Pursuits
were estimated
by
and the
(Prescott, Biographical and Critical Miscellanies, p. 77). Compare Thomas Babington Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, 2 vols. (London- J M Dent, 1961), vol. 2, pp. 366-71.
in respect of "social relations and Egyptians (Mexico, p. 33). We recall here Plato's reliance on an Egyp tian priest in the Timaeus who says to Solon: "You Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed among you down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with (22b5-c3). If Prescott had been more classical or Platonic in his outlook, he might have laid greater stress on the Egyptians' value of the ancient wisdom and less on what they reveal to the historian the preconditions for social progress. It is regarding interesting to note that in the New Atlantis, in which Bacon presents the outlines of the new scientific then called
of
ornamental"
Prescott
"points
resemblance"
culture"
between
the
Aztecs
and the
age"
"American"
society,
"Peru,
as
Coya,"
and
Mexico, "then
called
Tyrambel,"
are
described together
with
Atlantis
being "mighty
and proud
Prescott's Conquests
kingdoms, in
ancient
riches."
361
arms, shipping
repulsed and
and
Bacon
suggests that
it
was
Tyrambel
or
Mexico
ed. p.
which the
Athenians
Tristram Coffin
in the Timaeus (A Book of Seventeenth Century Prose, Alexander M. Witherspoon [New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929],
makes the some
Robert P.
44).
Athenian Stranger say to his two interlocutors: "Well, then, do you The ones that tell of many disas which have destroyed human beings and left many other things
truth in the ancient sayings?
race."
only
to
tiny
remnant of
the
human
Kleinias
replies:
"This
sort of
thing
seems
everyone"
(Laws 677a3;
see also
says that
be
regarded as
succeeded
humanity"
the outstanding philosopher of primitive mentality', that is, as the thinker who in giving philosophic currency and validity to the modes of life and behaviour of archaic (The Myth of the Eternal Return [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954], p. 34).
and
See
also
pp.
168-71.
30. In
Deuteronomy 4:19-20
it is
said:
heaven,
and when
thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of worship, and serve them/ which the
heaven,
shouldest
be driven to
heaven/ But the Lord hath taken you, be unto him a people of inheritance/ 31
.
Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole and brought you out of the iron furnace/ even out of Egypt, to
as ye are this
day."
Dugald Stewart
"very
and
hinge
of
the
controversy"
between those
who em
or
future for
humanity
calls
"Atheistical
and
Epi
prejudices"
is "the
essential
present state of
society,
any
which
has
occurred
in the preceding
ages of the
Following
art of
printing, the
discovery
of the
increasing
store of
science available
(The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, ed. Sir William Hamilton [Edinburgh: Thomas Constable, 1854], vol. 1, p. 500). According to Nietzsche there is now in place a "chain of tremendous pro
phylactic ourselves measures
which are
Ages."
"We
make
of
culture again
Shadow,"
to be destroyed overnight
by
("The Wanderer
and
His
to reject
a
universe, in
light
calculated
either the
to slacken
friends
humanity."
of
But
"some
planet."
destroy
the
surface of our
explain
that "The
than to the
object which
I have in
view at present
further
pp. on a
history
of our species
during
the
490, 500). In
few
other words
the progressive
vantage point
centuries or millenia.
But extending
one's gaze
consider the
possibility
of telluric or
life-ending
is
as much
in James C. Hepburn Aztecs, and Plato's, point. See Carl Becker, Robert A. Greenberg, eds., Modern Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 125-35.
as to concede the
and
33. Prescott
policy"
explains
monarchy"
"key
to
its habitual
was
for the
people"
"amautas"
or wise men
if science it could be that was available to them "engrossed the scanty stock of science (Peru, p. 791). While this may in fact have served to preserve the polity, it would put very clear limits on how far society might progress, if it be allowed that the diffusion of an elementary
understanding of nature and its laws is the sine qua non of society's advancement. in Thus Spake Zarathustra, III, 16, p. 34. "The Seven Seals (Or: The Yes and Amen 231. See Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man (Boston: Beacon, 1957), pp. 220-27; 437-40; and Karl Lowith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 191-22.
Song),"
called,"
Discussion
Of
said
Lincoln's speeches, whether greater or lesser, the only one that can be truly to have changed the course of history was delivered to the Republican
all
and
State Convention in Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. The utterances that have come down to us, graven in bronze like the
in stone,
Gettysburg
Address
and
the Second
Inaugural,
are
death,
to
they
designed to
reconcile us
fate
by discerning
hand
of
God in
events
merely
ular
chaotic.
Although these
times, they draw back the curtain of eternity and allow us, as time-bound mortals, to glimpse a divine purpose within a sorrow-filled present, and tell us how
our
deathless
end.
perhaps more than any political The House Divided speech, however, was a causal agent in bringing about the terrible events over address of the time
which
Lincoln
was
destined to
preside.
Its theme is
expressed
in the biblical
In it Lincoln
admonition that
against
itself
stand."
cannot
declared
that
he believed that
this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
He
said
dissolved, South,
or
or the
house to fall,
might might
but he did
it to become
all
one
thing
or all another.
Slavery
become lawful in
placed
all the
states, North
as well as
slavery
be
so
that
the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.
point of
however,
reason
it
was
Douglas,
tial
and
his doctrine
of popular
Lincoln
denied,
a middle ground
that influen
Republicans
were
finding increasingly
Vol. 24, No. 3
attractive.
interpretation,
Spring 1997,
364
Interpretation
intended to
destroy
might
The South knew very littie about the Lincoln who became President-elect in 1860. What it did know, however, was that his policy aimed uncompromisingly of slavery. No protestation on his part that he had at the "ultimate
extinction"
no act
intention
whatever
in the
by
the call
for "ultimate
the
extinction"
in the House Di
vided speech.
From the
South,
free
there was
little
reassurance
in Lincoln's
surrounded
"non-intervention"
be
by
an ever-more-powerful cordon of
could not
states.
Suppose
burgeon
outside
ing
the
slave
be
employed
or sold
existing limits of slavery. Suppose, in short, that slavery was to be strangled where it was, without external intervention. Or suppose, still further, that the
addition of
free
states would
eventually
give them a
would enable
None
of
Lincoln's
met
promises never
to
interfere
slavery in the slave states themselves the South knew that it would never in future possess
with
the
for
Southern independence, if slavery was to be preserved. Why did Lincoln pose the alternatives of slavery and freedom
promisingly?
so uncom
Throughout the
winter
and
spring
of
1856-57,
the
focus
of
Kansas. A mmp
con
participating meeting in Lecompton, Kansas, had framed an essentially proslavery constitution and Union.1 with it had applied for admission to the President Buchanan chose to
endorse the action of this
delegates
elected without
free-state
voters
convention,
with a view
Kansas
mestic
as a
state,
and with
it
an end a
to all
institutions."
There
ensued
battle royal,
federal responsibility for its "do with the free soil forces
than the redoubtable Stephen A.
championed
by
none other
Douglas,
with
and
skill, to direct
a struggle
to
prevent
Kansas from
becoming
It
of
incredible
the
was
Douglas,
a mere
three years
before, in
Kansas-Nebraska Act
of
1854,
who was
the Missouri
Compromise
place of was
restriction
principally responsible for the repeal of slavery in all the remaining Louisi
ana
Territory. In
that
declared
it
legislate slavery into any Territory therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to form regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States
or
State,
nor
to exclude it
and
....
365
was
the
famous doctrine
repealing
of a
"popular The
sovereignty."
From the
circumstances
its introduction
longstanding
exclusion of
as a
wholly proslavery
as the
measure.
manifesto
Party,
for
some time
of
known
the
Anti-Nebraska
party.
Here
Independent Democrats,
At the
present session
on
[of
reported
by
the
of
Senate Committee
Territories which,
the
unorganized
Congress,
We
bill
pledge; as a criminal
betrayal
of precious
rights;
from
our
States,
and convert
dreary
region of
despotism, inhabited by
masters
and slaves.
One
was
can
hardly
imagine
rhetoric more
inflammatory,
its
by
came who
the
free
by
had
subscribed
to the
account of
struggle over
Lecompton transformed
president,
In many respects, this was 1854 all over again. Once again a newly elected with all the influence a new president commands, had been induced,
of
because
his
southern
sympathies, to
support a
bill that
a
was
highly
revolt
objectionable
his
own party.
Once again,
party
followed,
party
leading
warfare
battle, famous in
the annals of
Along
with
First,
Stephen A. Douglas, previously the Senate floor leader for the administration, was now the floor leader for the opposition. The same tireless energy and the same
matchless readiness and resourcefulness
in debate
which
had
carried Kansas-
Nebraska to victory were now devoted to the defeat of Lecompton. Whereas Buchanan could not face the revolt of southerners if he opposed Lecompton, Douglas could not face the hostile response of Illinois and of the North generally if he
supported
Day
after
day, Douglas
seen, but for
voted on
Chase
Wade
1854
as
if he
had
a season it was seriously believed that Douglas might become a Republican. Some of the eastern leaders, especially, took up the idea of supporting him and bringing
country."
Henry Wilson believed Douglas would join the Republicans, and him as being "of more weight to our cause than any other ten men in the Horace Greeley, for all his professions of idealism, now declared: "The
party.
standard
Republican practicality
is too high;
was to throw
His idea of something more Republican support behind Douglas in Washington, and
we want
practical."
366
Interpretation
praise
Douglas
extravagantly.
To the
end of
his life, he
Douglas. In
would
have been
sound
Republican strategy to
support
urged
Illinois Republicans to
"sustain"
Douglas.
as
as
December
14, Douglas
forming
a great new
party to
disunionists.
From Antichrist to Savior in three years! The "season [when] it was seriously may, however, have been believed that Douglas might become a about one thing: if the clear the gravest of all the crises of the Union. Let us be
Republican"
"sustained"
Douglas, Lincoln's
and
abruptly to an
place.3
end.
standard
been lowered
as
Greeley desired,
have taken
the contest
between Lincoln
of
Douglas in 1858
would not
The Declaration
anchor of
Independence, in any
or
republic
American
no
would
have been
aban
doned. There
memorialize
would
have been
Gettysburg Address,
be
the
Founding in
rights
long
rights
of
black
essence of
"pop
sov"
is
revealed
in this
passage
Alton:
and
We in Illinois
tried slavery,
finding
that it
was
it for that
Clearly,
slavery was found profitable, there were no moral inhibitions against it, from Douglas's point of view. As he never tired of saying, he didn't care whether slavery was voted up or down, he cared only for
whenever and wherever
people
to make that
results of
decision.
Why
the
right
of the people
were
indif
ferent, Douglas
As
a
never undertook
to say.
sov"
matter,
"pop by no
sufficient
for opposing
means represented
remembered
"manifest
destiny,"
lands inhabited
added to the
by
"inferior
races."
It
must
be
remembered
migrated to
Mexico,
invited them,
and
became
independent.
States.4
Then Texas's
with
Subsequently boundary
the end
Texas
as a slave state
to the United
quarrel of
dispute
the
United States,
rest of the
result
being
land
area
American southwest, an addition of approximately 40 per cent to the of the United States. There was nothing remaining of Mexico or of
the rest of
means.5
have been
acquired
by
similar
Certainly
have been
combined with
American
367
slavery to produce the necessary instruments for racial domination. It should also be recalled that California became a free state largely because Chinese
labor
was
found
the
conditions
under which
labored be
were
from
slavery.
It
must also
recalled
others
by force,
was
with
calling for the acquisition of Cuba, either by issued in the same year as the passage of the Kansas-
would
(long before
Castro!)
as well no
No
resourcefulness
knows anything of Douglas's political ambition and can doubt that any merger of his political following
political with
the
Republicans
would
have
Republicans
was
being
most
Seward's "Irrepressible
speech
speech
until
the
antislavery
by
Republican leader
speech.
Lowering
could
with
Lincoln's in the
leadership
and
of the party.
without
How
the
closed ranks
doing
the same
in the
greater
contest of
1860? Douglas
presidency in 1860 only because of their contest in Illinois in 1858. Had that contest not taken place, Lincoln's path to the presidency would have been
closed,
and
Douglas's
not
made smooth.
opposed
Had Douglas
been
by
exactly
what
the party
alignment would
have been in 1860. One thing may be the Senate, and with his free soil opposi
1860, have
turned to
rebuilding his
that
support
as
he had
persuaded
Horace
Greeley
have
"pop
sov"
to make Kansas a
persuaded
Greeley's Cuba
opposite numbers
would
sov"
was good
enough to add
as slave states.
The Republicans
renewed
would
discover
vitality
in fact have
his
given a
to
dangerous
of
political of
by
of the eastern
leaders
When Lincoln
sat
down to
House Divided
speech
he faced
own political
Party;
and
free
destroy
Douglas's
credentials as a
importantly, he
set out
to
destroy
set out therefore, first of all, to leader. Less obviously, but not less his credentials to become again a leader of the
or slave.
He
free
soil
country. If the proslavery South had been more intel proslavery forces in the it would have realized that Douglas could do more was, ligent than it actually
368
Interpretation
good"
for them than any "positive ing the plains of Kansas but in
slavery.
disciple
of
contest
filibustering
south of the
border
lay
the future of
subsequent
even more
The
genius of the
and
Lincoln's
stature
in the South
It is
unlike
1858
Douglas,
Lincoln,
and
was
battling
on two
political
warfare
waged
by
the
Buchanan
administration against
office
holders
especially
postmasters
and replaced
by
administration
owing allegiance to Douglas were fired supporters. Buchanan's point man was his Attor
one of
the sharpest
debaters
of the was
day.6
What
Douglas
its
essential
Lincoln's
as
attack. student of
Lincoln's attack,
reference
every
knows, has
at
peculiar
to the
famous
Douglas
Freeport:
Can the
any
people of a
citizen of the of a
formation
United States Territory, in any lawful way, United States, exclude slavery from its limits State Constitution?
much popular
wizardry,
throwing Douglas
form
or
his
guard.7
On the contrary, it
answered
was a question
that, in
one
ing
hammering
inconsistency
of
Douglas's
answers.
Douglas had
in Dred Scott
tory
and
there
lawfully
hold his
slave as
meaning of the Constitution, and into any United States Terri property. But, said Douglas, his ability
legislation,
which
his
citizens of the
territory
were
free to
grant or to withhold.
Douglas,
the
right
of
Territory
recognized
was
merely
might
sovereignty"
of
territory
It
was
depended upon the "popu in the territory. In this way, he said, the people of in fact exclude slavery from their midst.
concrete enjoyment
"abstract."
Its
the settlers
the success
of
that
Douglas
These
same
Republicans
little,
or rather
approved of the
fact,
"nullifying"
Dred Scott
debate
themselves cheated
of
fruits
of
that victory.
out, in the
debates,
that
Taney
had said,
369
in
property in the territories was "expressly the Constitution. If this was so, then that right stood upon the same
slaves as
right to hold
affirmed"
constitu
affirmed"
tional
foundation
as the
right to
reclaim
fugitive slaves,
as
"expressly
fugitives
in Article IV
of the
Constitution. But
the
right to
reclaim
was also a
merely abstract or barren right unless implemented by congressional legislation, as it had been in both 1793 and 1850. No one, Lincoln said, could take an oath
to support the
vote
Constitution
as
his
from legislation
implementing
expressly
affirmed constitutional
right.
when
Douglas's
ever
to any
fugitive
slave
law. "Popular
constitutional
sovereignty"
a means of
on
nullifying
of
"expressly
affirmed"
right
placed
Douglas This
the side
the abolitionists!
evisceration of
"popular
sovereignty"
by
Lincoln in the
course of
the
ultimate
that met in Charleston in April of 1860. When the majority in that convention,
firmly
code
committed
to
Douglas,
refused
favor
of a slave
seven states of
Deep
South
withdrew.
These
from the Union before Lincoln's inauguration from the Democratic Convention
that
the
was
following
But it
was secession
politically decisive. As Don Fehrenbacher has written, everyone knew that South that would not accept Stephen A. Douglas as leader of the Democratic
would never accept
Party
the
Abraham Lincoln
what
as
President
of
was
foolish in
kindly
provided
it did. It actually looked at Douglas through them in the debates that followed the
House Divided
demand for
phy
root.
a slave
Had they been wise they would have abandoned their code for territories like Kansas or Nebraska, where geogra
soil movement made realized
and a militant
free
have
They
would
Cuba,
have
where south of
Texas) they
federal
slave code.
They
might then
have
have
done everything both necessary and possible to guarantee the survival cess of slavery. Indeed, for all we know, slavery might be flourishing
us even now.
and suc
amongst
we
speech to thank.
NOTES
1. The
stages
in the forms
of the
various
in the
here. Nor
will we enter
the English
Bill,
which resulted
in
the
final
rejection of
Lecompton
by
the voters
speech
foregone
conclusion.
370
2. The
by
York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 320, 321. 3. In December 28, 1857, Lincoln wrote to Lyman Trumbull: "What does the New York Tri Have they its constant eulogising, and admiring, and magnifying of Douglas? bune mean
by
concluded
that the
republican
cause, generally,
can
best be
promoted
Illinois? If
once.
so we would
by
"As
yet
I have heard
of no republican ears of
here going
or
. .
over to
Douglas; but if
to din his
praises
into the
its five
ten thousand
republican readers
in Illinois, it is
more
The 354). It
statewide vote of
for
the
Repub
p.
the Douglas
Democrats,
and
Democrats"
(Potter,
be
seen
have
exerted powerful
leverage
the Republicans
margin of
4. When Texas
consent of
was annexed,
it
was provided
Congress
into
as
many
as
five
states.
victory or defeat. with the that, in future, it might be divided That is to say, Texas might have added ten, rather
5. Lincoln's
the eve of the
Winter,"
apprehensions on
from
what
on
1858
campaign.
weight of
he threw the
On December 18, 1860, in the midst of the "Great Secession to extend the his influence against the Crittenden compromise
sorry any republican inclines to dally with Pop. Sov. of any sort. It acknowledges that has equal rights with liberty, and surrenders all we have contended for. Once fastened on us as slavery settled policy, filibustering for all South of us, and making slave states of it, follows in spite of us, "I
am
with an
6. In
early Supreme Court decision, holding our free state constitutions to be unconstitutional. the Name of the People: Speeches and Writings of Lincoln and Douglas in the Ohio
. .
Campaign of 1859, edited with an Introduction by Harry V. Jaffa and Robert Johannsen (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1959), reprints "Observations on Senator Douglas's Views in Popular
Sovereignty"
anonymously, it
against
soon was
from the Washington Constitution, September 10, 1859. Although published known that the author was black. This is a good sample of what was said
the
Douglas from
Buchanan
administration side of
1858
chap.
campaign.
Question.'"
Book Reviews
John Horgan, The End of Science (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996), 308 pp., $24.00. Alex Harvey
amplified a trifle
in the
subtitle on the
jacket:
Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age. Support Facing for the charge that "pure science might be provides both the generating
over"
force
and
is little
more of a
funda
mental character
is
an
intellectual
structure
is
sculpted.
The
method
is
the
interview
with
leading
practitioners
by
the
and
form, but
judge
are a skillful
into
involved
and
Mr. Horgan is
competent, well-qualified
prosecutor. which
been
a staff writer
leading
scientists of our
but has had the opportunity to interview many of time. They range from Roger Penrose to Thomas
to Stephen
Jay
But, does he prove his case? In Scot other Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions, there are three possible verdicts in a criminal proceeding: Not Guilty, Guilty, and Not Proven. The latter is not equivalent to our Mistrial. It means just what it says, i.e., Not Proven.
scientific evidence.
Everything is
Proven.
In the
must
be judged Not
to be covered. to know
there
is
a great
deal
of ground
Not
possible
for
a scientist
all of
science,
i.e.,
to be able to
present time
physics.
it is
not even
creatively in any and all fields. At the possible, in this sense, for a physicist to know all of
General"
Indeed, the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (American to "90. Geophysics, Astron of Institute Physics, 1992) runs from "00.
Astrophysics"
omy,
and
and
classification constructed
for
all of the
physical,
life,
it
might well
be the
size of the
interpretation,
Spring 1997,
372
Interpretation
must constrain an
his
choice of topics. of
This he does
by
of
disciplines:
Social
Philosophy
Science,
Neuro-
Complexity,
of
which
Horgan
combines
into Chaoplexity.
and
In addition,
entific ror of
there are
or
final
chapters entitled
"The End
Limitology"
of
"Sci
Theology,
God."
The End
Machine
Science"
and an
These latter
resemble
in
chapters, but
they
are
largely
One
speculative.
the choices. If evolutionary biology is have an infinite future? Why is and do paleontology geology coming discipline does discuss many fascinating included? This of science philosophy Popper's concept of is entertain issues. The argument over Karl
might ask some questions about
to an end,
"falsifiability"
more?
It does
not seem
of science.
These
concerning
your
favorite
be
put
and
to be extrapolated to all of
of science
is broad
enough
activity
(In this
do
not
topics
is,
of
he
might
believers in astrology, a flat earth, or channeling.) His not so broad. It is possibly limited by the number have been able to interview, the preparatory reading he had
course,
disciplines
chosen to support
result
is the
In
end
various
fields he
what
attempts to
view
because
For
can
be
accomplished
reasons
now
plished.
various cites
disparate
more
instances he
cial support.
increasing public apathy to science and a drying up of finan There is also a burgeoning Luddite public antipathy to science as a
is
evil. point.
This is scarcely to be taken seriously. Both are One recalls readily the sudden increase in funding for
the Russians
bility
only
successfully launched Sputnik. The possi in any given field always exists. The
progress? and a
"no"
criterion should
should
be
overcome a
vaguely that he
does
not
fundamental bar to proving his thesis. It try too hard. This problem resides in the
nonquantitative
sciences.
distinction between
mathematics
quantitative
and
is
employed
in
branches
does
The
predictive power
very
Paul Feyerabend: "Prayer may not be to celestial mechanics, but it surely holds its own
by
economics."
The
problem
is
Book Reviews
pline
373
is essentially qualitative, then any judgements about it are necessarily At best, only a speculation can be advanced that it has reached its limits. Persuasive though the arguments may be, they can hardly be conclusive.
qualitative.
This
situation pertains
in
he
manifest
in the
chapter on neuroscience.
While it
explores
some of the
conflicting
opinions
not
in this area, all it does is emphasize to have a clue to the solution of the
Are there
no
breakthroughs to be
made
here?
the chapters on Physics and
Only in
able.
Cosmology
judgements
and even
In the early part of the book reference is made to The Answer [author's emphasis]. In physics this is the Holy Grail, the modem search for which was initiated
when
Einstein
sought to
relativity,
unify his theory of gravitation, i.e., general Maxwell. The effort was never
successful,
ever since.
but the
concept of unification
has been
driving
forces
and
force for
physicists
when
he initiated
the search
forces: the
and
"weak"
which mediate
the
interactions
the
of
electrons of
positrons
the
"strong"
force
ele
which governs
interactions
There
protons, neutrons,
and
the
even
heavier
particles.
that there
might
be
fifth
possibility.
Electrodynamics force
the
weak
"electroweak"
electroweak
theory
One
but
Eugene Wigner's
wiggle."
justifiably
contemptuous you an
dismissal
of
free
parameters:
"Give
make
I'll draw
elephant;
I'll
its tail
Unified Theories
to
or
GUTS, but
is
This has been seriously addressed in the so-called Grand even these have drawbacks. There is much yet how it is to be done is
no reason not the
be done,
for
for
pessimism. reason
String theory
is
that
one of
the regions
being
explored,
least
which
it
would
gravitational
force
masses of the
hints,
particles.
a reason
yet
tantalizing
to be pessimistic.
Horgan
become
the
unanswerable.
die away because the questions have reasons for such a situation to arise.
unanswerable and the other
will not
questions are
intrinsically
is that
As
data
theoreticians feed
be
available.
H. M. Georgi, the distinguished particle theorist, has put it: "The progress of the field is determined in the long run, by the progress of experimental particle
physics.
Theorists are,
after
all,
parasites.
Without
our experimental
friends to
374
do the
Interpretation
real work, we might as well
philos
be
mathematicians or
More
and more
data
at
higher
the
and
higher
Dr. Georgi
seen
refers
to. The
larger the
accelerator.
Here
we
have
Congress termi
not there
machine.
And
even
if it did
is
it
would
have
provided all
Money
provides
possibility
And
even
if limitless
be money were available, would the ultimate globe-circling built? There are many open questions here, including the idea that the whole structure may take a different form. None of these questions is intrinsically
accelerator ever
unanswerable.
Cosmology
global scale.
is the study of the structure and dynamics of the universe on a Here Mr. Horgan has a stronger case. It also is quantitative, but
are obtainable
there
is
an
only
by
observation.
We
infor
We
must
take what the Hubble telescope and our radio and optical
is
To this
elementary
particle
interactions
bang."
"big
at work range.
in this domain is
gravitation.
Both the
Electromagnetic
forces,
which are
long
cos
range,
cancel out
by
virtue of
having
both
Thus,
mology is discussed solely within the context of the Einstein theory of general relativity. A cosmological model is then nothing more or less than a solution of
the Einstein field equations. As observations are refined so will
be
our
distinguish
able
and select a
whether
best
candidate
among the
various models.
ability to We will be
the
to decide
will continue or
big
crunch.
general relativity.
Cosmology, thus,
doubt that it cessfully
must
stands or
falls
with
Einstein's
This is
not
a stable configuration.
be
quantized.
General relativity is a classical theory, and there is little Despite massive effort this has not been suc
There
seem to
and
accomplished.
be
as
many
being
pursuers,
.
possibility
of a
succe.f
theory
to general
relativity
being found
one
day. In
this case the problems of cosmology are once again open to reconsideration.
Mr. Horgan is acutely aware that looking over his shoulder as he and the people he interviews judge science to be entering its twilight years is the sim
ilarity
of this
judgement to that
started
made almost a
Max Planck
advised
his doctoral
studies
by
his
mentor
century ago. It is said that when in the late nineteenth century he was little more to be done in physics beyond
well
tying up
In 1894
of
some at the
loose
dedication
known
and understood.
Laboratory
at
the
University
and
said, "The
all
facts
have
been discovered,
firmly
Book Reviews
established that the
new
375
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of discoveries is exceedingly remote Our future discoveries must be
.
sixth place of
decimals."
Mr. Horgan do
reproduces
this predic
in
order to refute
well
not
convincingly.
It is
known that
and
in their twenties
the highest
make.
level, but
so at
to
It is thus
discipline
are
the
best qualified psychologically to make predictions about great new discoveries just beyond the horizon. They will not be the ones doing the discovering.
No,
apart
be Not Proven.
well worth reading.
For
each of the
a
fields covered,
epilogue,
overview sented.
level
of
They
in
focussed
and
very
effective more
if
idiosyncratic
would
idiosyncratic in the
manifest able.
sense
that there
is
of
be
a straight question-and-answer
way
objection
It
In
some
report seems a
debate.
Without doubt, an expert in any one of the fields will find something objection able, but not of sufficient importance to vitiate the entire chapter. For instance, in the Introduction there is the
statement:
"Many
physicists,
beginning
with
Einstein, had
into
a
tried and
failed to fuse
'unified'
single, seamless
theory.
tempt at unification
involved
These
relativity and classical electrodynamics. The nonexpert in any of the disciplines treated might enjoy reading the book. It is supple,
well
general
written,
and
smoothly
Benardete, The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato's Philebus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), xiv + 250 pp., $37.50.
Will Morrisey
Seth
finally
beautiful in his
the Benardete states (p. ix). Philosophy's superiority to summary but in its ability poetry "cannot lie in the neutral impersonality of its "to tell a better story than (p. ix). If means, finally, more beau
of
discourse"
poetry"
"better"
tiful, then how does philosophy differ from poetry in kind? Benardete answers that philosophy's beauty is a beauty of the mind and its thoughts, not of the
body
and
its actions,
from the in
beauty
that reflects
"divide between
denies"
poetry
body
farther
above
is impossible, but that only makes it more beautiful, not educate [the philosopher] either in its
(p.
xi).
opinions or
philosopher
differ from
"there is a
this
the aesthete?
range of
beautiful is
human
that is
incorrigibly false,
the
recognition of
is known to the soul, which is always trying to divine itself and "hides from the enchantments of
is,"
where
for
the
poetry"
(p.
Is, then,
beautiful
with the
not
exactly
replaced
the good
beautiful.
consists of
This book
nardete's commentary.
Socrates
order
to articu
late
and
interpret
what
is the best
of
His
"way,"
he says, is
life that
one
to throw
"perplexity"
principal
interlocutor
here, Protarchus, is
would not
wants a
Socrates
knowledge
know
one
is
being
pleasure.
the
intense pleasures, particularly sexual pleasures, while same time or at many other times); as Yogi Berra said, "You can't hit and think Socrates may not show by this argument that thought is not at the same
time."
and
being
are
distinct,
being; he is
it
seeks.
well aware of
the
difference between
the
good end
He
suggests a solution
to the problem
by
joy
nor
interpretation,
378
Interpretation
possible"
ful thinking as pure as (p. 67). As for knowledge, it is similarly ranked. Some knowledge is clearer, purer, than other knowledge. Protarchus easily grasps this point in the abstract but applies it in an unfortu Asked if there is a truest understanding, an understanding that "is by in the
way"
nate way.
nature always
same
Gorgias'
mentions pure.
opinion
that rhetoric
is the best
not
art.
Socrates finds
insufficiently
about
Socrates does
sure.
say
that thought
is
or
brings
and,
the
most
intense
plea
He distinguishes thought
not eliminate
and pleasure
while
subordinating the
latter,
does
requires
that mind
power of
it. But again, any blending requires measure, and measure be prior to pleasure. Measure is beautiful; there, Socrates
the good has
says, "the
fled for
us
into the
nature of
the
beautiful"
(p.
81). In that
sense the
beautiful
"replaces"
the good.
Benardete
limited
and
itself
It begins in
medias
has
'missing'
beginning.
Philebus does
We
are
forced to
wonder
not represent
something
philosophy, that it is
activity that
cannot
have
beginning
always
strictly determined kind, even though the philosopher begins somewhere in the neighborhood of the true beginning of philosophy every question short of the answer he has set out to find. The death or senility also cuts short his quest without affecting the
philosopher's own
unending life
of
88)
cosmological
Philosophy
rates
the quarrel
of philoso when
concerning
for
the other
human,
Soc
in
turned away from the teleological physics that previous philosophers had
myths.
offered as a replacement
The
uniqueness of the
not
Philebus
the
consists
mentioning city and almost mentioning the law. "All of morality is out of bounds in the Philebus, and, whatever the human good turns out to be, it is not informed by any social (p. 90).
not
virtues"
its
presentation of
Socrates
after
his
'turn'
by answering
questions with
finality.
must reflect the
Philebus
any true philosophical question, but it cannot represent the true state of the issue of the human good, for that issue must be settled once and for all if the philosopher is not to be in doubt about the good of philosophy as the human good. The argument of the Philebus must come to a nonarbitrary end while it opens up everything else. (P. 91)
. . .
Human
pleasure
is double: tragic
or comic.
combination,
cannot
comedy
and
tragedy
human
life"
(p. 91),
else
philosophy
col-
Book Reviews
lapses back into
not
379
poetry. Philosophy, then, is a way of life, as "Socrates stands just for thinking in all its purity but for the effort to think as (p. 94). The moral-political life represents a 'third independent of either philoso
well" way,'
phy
or the
life
of pleasure. means
'Protarchus'
first
beginning
achieve such
perfectly free self-determination, as certain limits are inevitable in any life. The desire to maximize pleasure and thought simultaneously is Utopian, as hedo
nism's
precludes
a good
time. The
of
fools,
be silly is a privilege of the wise on idealism" (p. 107), which funny form of
sal with
(p. 106). Not only is hedonism "a conceives pleasure as a kind of univer
in it, but each of the other ways of many particulars that life has its own funny form of idealism: the too-political man, whose desire for
self-sufficiency forever
sophic
'participate'
contradicts
his
real
dependence
on
Socrates,
Plato's
whose
life delineates
rescue.
the
limits
of philo
inquiry
'poetic'
thought yields a political sort In Protarchus, the attempt to of soul, but one of potentially the most dangerous type. "Protarchus is more (p. 109). A eager to win, or at least not to lose, than he is interested in
mix pleasure and
pleasure"
rhetorician unbound
by
the
laws,
an apolitical-political as
anny.
Socrates
or
cannot as
deal
with
him
he deals
with
the respectable
sober
but
waver
ing Crito,
Socrates
interlocutors.
and
must
convince
are
many pleasures,
that
The "second
sees
first sailing,
on
the winds
divine inspiration,
rowing, using
is
necessary.
Protarchus is
well
beyond the
he
preaches
he
would
free). He is
not yet at
his
not want
men"
very
much
to know its
ignorance
quest-
hedonists.
the problem of the one
is
its
problems
the many
being
perhaps
the foremost
of of
among them
of
does
Socrates'
escape
notice. choose
In terms life
is the
how to
rationally the
reason,
how to know in
settled practically by providence or necessity, reasoning life is best. It is unprovidential or random, even if very fortunate. This actually may be
would
lower limit
on the
philoso-
380
pher's
Interpretation
freedom. Some
simply do not incline to laugh the entire basis of Antigone's
souls more than satisfied
belief. "Socrates
nobility"
rejects with a
(p. 199).
Obviously,
be
laugh,
else
is
goods"
The human
soul
by
does
if it
never
hedonism
it
"simply
itself that
its
own goodness.
pain"
To
recognize
and
(what
finally
just
mirrors that psychology?) the hopes of reward for the (p. 219). The truth the philosopher uncovers is "the truth of
structure"
able
truth,
although
(p. 236),
which
is
soul
to recognize
it. Few
bring
themselves to live
happily
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