hat "nothing is but what is not"; and his reason is so impeded that he judges, "Thesesolicitings cannot be evil, cannot be good." Still, he isprovided with so much natural good that he is able to controlthe apprehensions of his inordinate imagination and decidesto take no step involving crime. His autonomous decision notto commit murder, however, is not in any sense based uponmoral grounds. No doubt he normally shrinks from theunnaturalness of regicide; but he so far ignores ultimateends that, if he could perform the deed and escape itsconsequences here upon this bank and shoal of time, he'ldjump the life to come. Without denying him still a complexityof motives - as kinsman and subject he may possiblyexperience some slight shade of unmixed loyalty to the Kingunder his roof-we may even say that the consequences which hefears are not at all inward and spiritual, It is to bedoubted whether he has ever so far considered the possibleeffects of crime and evil upon the human soul-his laterdiscovery of horrible ravages produced by evil in his ownspirit constitutes part of the tragedy. Hi is mainlyconcerned, as we might expect, with consequences involvingthe loss of mutable goods which he already possesses andvalues highly.After the murder of Duncan, the natural good in himcompels the acknowledgment that, in committing the unnaturalact, he has filed his mind and has given his eternal jewel,the soul, into the possession of those demonic forces whichare the enemy of mankind. He recognizes that the acts ofconscience which torture him are really expressions of thatoutraged natural law, which inevitably reduced him asindividual to the essentially human. This is the inescapablebond that keeps him pale, and this is the law of his ownnatural from whose exactions of devastating penalties heseeks release:Come, seeling night...And with thy bloody and invisible handCancel and tear to pieces that great bondWhich keeps me pale.He conceives that quick escape ...
