rst, Macbethremains essentially human and his conscience continues towitness the diminution of his being. That is to say, there isstill left necessarily some natural good in him; sin cannotcompletely deprive him of his rational nature, which is theroot of his inescapable inclination to virtue. We do not needHecate to tell us that he is but a wayward son, spiteful andwrathful, who, as other do, loves for his own ends. This isapparent throughout the drama; he never sins because, likethe Weird Sisters, he loves evil for its own sake; andwhatever he does is inevitably in pursuance of some apparentgood, even though that apparent good is only temporal ofnothing more that escape from a present evil. At the end, inspite of shattered nerves and extreme distraction of mind,the individual passes out still adhering admirably to hiscode of personal courage, and the man's conscience stillclearly admonishes that he has done evil.Moreover, he never quite loses completely the liberty offree choice, which is the supreme bonum naturae of mankind.But since a wholly free act is one in accordance with reason,in proportion as his reason is more and more blinded byinordinate apprehension of the imagination and passions ofthe sensitive appetite, his volitions become less and lessfree. And this accounts for our feeling, toward the end ofthe drama, that his actions are almost entirely determinedand that some fatality is compelling him to his doom. Thiscompulsion is in no sense from without-though theologians mayat will interpret it so-as if some god, like Zeus in Greektragedy, were dealing out punishment for the breaking ofdivine law. It is generated rather from within, and it is notmerely a psychological phenomenon. Precepts of the naturallaw-imprints of the eternal law- deposited in his nature havebeen violated, irrational acts have established habitstending to further irrationality, and one of the penaltiesexacted is dire impairment of the liberty of free choi...
