from the accusations ofconscience may possibly be effected by utter extirpation ofthe precepts of natural law deposited in his nature. And heimagines that the execution of more bloody deeds will servehis purpose. Accordingly, then, in the interest of personalsafety and in order to destroy the essential humanity inhimself, he instigates the murder of Banquo.But he gains no satisfying peace because hes consciencestill obliges him to recognize the negative quality of eviland the barren results of wicked action. The individual whoonce prized mutable goods in the form of respect andadmiration from those about him, now discovers that even suchevanescent satisfactions are denied him:And that which should accompany old age,As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,I must not look to have; but, in their stead,Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.But the man is conscious of a profound abstraction ofsomething far more precious that temporal goods. His beinghas shrunk to such little measure that he has lost his formersensitiveness to good and evil; he has supped so full withhorrors and the disposition of evil is so fixed in him thatnothing can start him. His conscience is numbed so that heescapes the domination of fears, and such a consummation mayindeed be called a sort of peace. But it is not entirely whatexpected or desires. Back of his tragic volitions is theineradicable urge toward that supreme contentment whichaccompanies and rewards fully actuated being; the peace whichhe attains is psychologically a callousness to pain andspiritually a partial insensibility to the evidences ofdiminished being. His peace is the doubtful calm of utternegativity, where nothing matters.This spectacle of spiritual deterioration carried to thepoint of imminent dissolution arouses in us, however, acurious feeling of exaltation. For even after the externaland internal forces of evil have done their wo...
