CHAPTER III.

MACBETH,

AS TYPE OF THE CELTIC RACE.

1. As, in the animal system, the third or nervous tissue is the mediator, the combiner, and the regulator of the extreme tissues, so in the social life of Europe. the race which executes the like function, of successively controlling and progressively organizing the despotic and dispersive instincts of the Italic and Teutonic races, is, as indicated by its history and local position, the Celtic.

From this mediatorial character must flow, then, the criteria. They must, by consequence, not be contrary to those of the extremes, as these antagonistic characters have been to one another contrariety can subsist but between two things in a plane or system. The relation of the third race must be that of opposition. Superimposed upon both the former and thus advanced into a higher plane, while it assimilates to either in the regions of abutment, its main direction passes off in the diagonal to their confliction, and thus diverts them from their tendency to mutual annihilation into the orbit of progression, co-operation, and futurity.

The corresponding tests must be therefore as follow: In intellect, the predominance of the Reasoning faculty, as opposed to the reflective and the perceptive tendencies; or, in the language of method, the control and the completion of induction and analysis, by the means of synthesis: the conduct, ratiocinative, circumspective, systematic. In morality, the test of media or the Consequences of the act, as opposed to the criteria of motives and of ends; for Reason, coming at last to know that human impulses or purposes cannot possibly have power to alter the moral order of the universe, resigns itself to learn and pursue this natural order, through a tissue of relations, where all is graduated consequence. In speculation, this race should be Methodic, organizing, as opposed to the exclusively accumulative and explorative; and in the theològic aspect, set the fixity of institution against the turbulence of prophetism and the torpor of priestcraft; or, in more familiar terms, Calvinism or Gallicanism, against the extreme contraries of Romanism and of Protestantism. The Manners should be at once dignified, courteous, and cordial, as proceeding from a temperament in which the nervous eminence has raised the slavishness of cellularity, and ruled the rudeness of muscularity. In fine, the tendencies, not introverted, individual as in Hamlet, nor retroverted to family passions and pursuits as in Iago; but circumverted, expansive, generous, magnanimous, in one word, Social.

As in the other races, these qualities run to vices. The mental one of Reasoning, to a debilitating caution, a timidity of action in new or weighty undertakings, arising from the power of calling up by forecast all contingencies. In the

moral test of Consequences, the excess is a sort of callousness to every cruelty that is found implicated in the logic of the situation; looking chiefly to the means which are the object of the Reason, not to the motive as in the Conscience, nor to the end as in Religion, the man of reasoning, if but once launched, may be impelled from crime to crime, without malevolence of purpose, without cruelty of character, but merely in obedience to the consequential requisite of being consistent with what is done, and being consummative of what was planned the premises committed, the consequences could not aggravate. The weak side of the philosophy is a similar indifference to the suggestions of the sentiments and superstitions of mankind, through a still premature reliance on the sufficiency of reason; or otherwise it may be called excessive theorising, unbased upon the facts and the traditions of the fellow races. The foible on the score of manners is incurred in the two-fold tendency, of being too open to impressions from society, which imparts fickleness, and of perverting the accomplishments into a mask of dissimulation. The mad extreme of sociability assumes that form of ambition, which is neither brute avidity nor blind domination, but soars to what was well described as "the last infirmity of noble minds". -a lust to win the approbation, or even notice of the world, which drives to sacrificing private rights to the collective consideration.

Now, both these qualities and failings, which are respectively all correlative, may be evinced beyond denial to mark distinctively the Celtic race, and should, according to the proposition, unfold the character and play of Macbeth.

2. The Reasoning faculty is signalised at the very outset of the piece, and in the emblematic prompters of the action, the so-called witches. For these are instruments of reason, that is media, of foreknowledge. The ordinary witches were pragmatic, not prophetic. No more are the Weird sisters, as is the current notion, of Gothic origin in either their nature or even name. The term "weird" is not derived from the Anglo-Saxon wyrd, which merely signifies a word, and does not seem to have really borne, unless by late imitation, the mythologic import of the fatum of the Latin. The epithet is simply a Scottish crasis of wayward. But not this, in the ordinary English sense of froward, which would not well consort with the functions of those beings. The meaning and etymology are: wards of the way.1 And there is no superstition more peculiar to the Celts than this idea

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1 This sense, if it ever prevailed among the English, has been lost through confusion with the merely moral homophone. The dictionaries all derive the ward in wayward from the Anglo-Saxon weard, which is equal to the Latin versus. So that consequently wayward means to-wards the way, and is said of one disposed to pursue his own ways, or volitions, or whims. But how does this comport with the equally English "froward," of which the composition is exactly the contrary, and which is, notwithstanding, made equivalent in meaning? The matter is consigned to the behests of the lexicographers, it being sufficient here that the fact supports the text. Moreover, it is known that the word "weird" is of Scotch origin, as Johnson admits, in authorising it by Gavin Douglas ; and that here the term wayward, from which it was contracted, observed the English analogy of the words vanward and rearward. For these denote respectively not towards the van and rear, but the ward, the watch, the guard of these extremities of the army. It is, however, to be owned that, in the Teutonic idioms, the expressions to ward off and to turn towards are close synonyms. A curious comment on the warrior and other traits of the race.

of fairies, individually or in small bands, frequenting solitary pathways to watch and waylay mortals. It would be eminently rife in the vast moor wilds of the Highlands. Such, accordingly, is the scene where the weird sisters were encountered. And we have also, in this itinerant peculiarity, the explanation of the description which Shakespeare gives them, of "posters of the sea and land."

Still more broadly does the nature or attributes of the weird sisters protest against another Gothic pedigree from the valkyriur. These more popularly known as the handmaids of Odin-were the opposite in all things, function, form, age, number. They were young, they were beautiful, they were unfixed in number, they were Hebes to the beerdrinking divinity of the North. They were also a sort of ambulances of the dead on the field of battle, a service equally conformable to the propensions of a warrior race. It was thus the Arabian houris bore off the souls of the fallen heroes. The Teutonic ones had further some minor attributions, which are not now more easy than important to be settled-the celestial institutions and economy of this race having been as undefined and disorderly as the terrestrial. In fine, these women were of Paradise (if one could desecrate the name by applying it to a porter-house), and not all of earth; which puts them wholly beyond the precincts of the category in question.

On the contrary, the weird sisters were of earth, if not humanity; they were aged, to symbolise maturity of knowledge; ugly and equivocal to the extent of having beards, to denote the cold survival of the passions by the knowing faculty; had, as functions, the disclosure,