with Shakespeare the transformation had reached the State also. The
King, the Father, the representative of the Consummate Self, the maximum
of all life, the symbol of the consummate being, the becoming Supreme,
Godlike, Infinite, he must perish and pass away. This Infinite was not
infinite, this consummation was not consummated, all this was fallible,
false. It was rotten, corrupt. It must go. But Shakespeare was also the
thing itself. Hence his horror, his frenzy, his self-loathing.
The King, the Emperor is killed in the soul of man, the old order of
life is over, the old tree is dead at the root. So said Shakespeare. It
was finally enacted in Cromwell. Charles I took up the old position of
kingship by divine right. Like Hamlet's father, he was blameless
otherwise. But as representative of the old form of life, which mankind
now hated with frenzy, he must be cut down, removed. It was a
symbolic act.
The world, our world of Europe, had now really turned, swung round to a
new goal, a new idea, the Infinite reached through the omission of Self.
God is all that which is Not-Me. I am consummate when my Self, the
resistant solid, is reduced and diffused into all that which is Not-Me:
my neighbour, my enemy, the great Otherness. Then I am perfect.
And from this belief the world began gradually to form a new State, a
new body politic, in which the Self should be removed. There should be
no king, no lords, no aristocrats. The world continued in its religious
belief, beyond the French Revolution, beyond the great movement of
Shelley and Godwin. There should be no Self. That which was supreme was
that which was Not-Me, the other. The governing factor in the State was
the idea of the good of others; that is, the Common Good. And the
_vital_ governing idea in the State has been this idea since Cromwell.
Before Cromwell the idea was 'For the King', because every man saw
himself consummated in the King. After Cromwell the idea was 'For the
good of my neighbour', or 'For the good of the people', or 'For the good
of the whole'. This has been our ruling idea, by which we have more or
less lived.
Now this has failed. Now we say that the Christian Infinite is not
infinite. We are tempted, like Nietzsche, to return back to the old
pagan Infinite, to say that is supreme. Or we are inclined, like the
English and the Pragmatist, to say, 'There is no Infinite, there is no
Absolute. The only Absolute is expediency, the only reality is sensation
and momentariness.' But we may say this, even act on it, _à la Sanine_.
But we never believe it.
What is really Absolute is the mystic Reason which connects both
Infinites, the Holy Ghost that relates both natures of God. If we now
wish to make a living State, we must build it up to the idea of the Holy
Spirit, the supreme Relationship. We must say, the pagan Infinite is
infinite, the Christian Infinite is infinite: these are our two
Consummations, in both of these we are consummated. But that which
relates them alone is absolute.
This Absolute of the Holy Ghost we may call Truth or Justice or Right.
These are partial names, indefinite and unsatisfactory unless there be
kept the knowledge of the two Infinites, pagan and Christian, which they
go between. When both are there, they are like a superb bridge, on which
one can stand and know the whole world, my world, the two halves of
the universe.
'_Essere, o non essere, è qui il punto._'
To be or not to be was the question for Hamlet to settle. It is no
longer our question, at least, not in the same sense. When it is a
question of death, the fashionable young suicide declares that his
self-destruction is the final proof of his own incontrovertible being.
And as for not-being in our public life, we have achieved it as much as
ever we want to, as much as is necessary. Whilst in private life there
is a swing back to paltry selfishness as a creed. And in the war there
is the position of neutralization and nothingness. It is a question of
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