against his misery, by combating the testimony of his eyes and ears with that of his affections.
"Ulyss. All's done, my lord.
Tro. It is.
Ulyss.Why stay we then?
Tro. To make a recordation to my soul
Of every syllable that here was spoke.
But, if I tell how these two did co-act,
Shall I not lie in publishing the truth?
Sith, yet there is a credence in my heart,
An esperance so obstinately strong,
That doth avert the attest of eyes and ears,
As if those organs had deceptious functions,
Created only to calumniate.
Was Cressid here?
Ulyss. I cannot conjure, Trojan.
Tro. She was not, sure.
Ulyss. Most sure she was.
Tro. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.
Ther. Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?
Tro. This is not she, O madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against thyself!
Bi-fold authority where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid!
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth;
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifice for a point, as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof, to enter."
The arguments of Macbeth against the unreal mockeries of the phantom rest upon a like foundation; but somehow or other, and despite of all the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley, there is a vast difference between appearance and reality. Hamlet, and Brutus, and Macbeth may have seen ghosts, and believed in them more or less, but a hungry man never disbelieves in the pudding he is eating; unless, indeed, he is absolutely insane, and then no limit can be set to the absurdities of belief or disbelief.
