The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus is
that those who have little shall have less, and that those who have
much shall take all that others have left. The people are poor;
therefore they ought to be starved. They are slaves; therefore they
ought to be beaten. They work hard; therefore they ought to be
treated like beasts of burden. They are ignorant; therefore they
ought not to be allowed to feel that they want food, or clothing, or
rest, that they are enslaved, oppressed, and miserable. This is the
logic of the imagination and the passions; which seek to aggrandize
what excites admiration and to heap contempt on misery, to raise
power into tyranny, and to make tyranny absolute; to thrust down
that which is low still lower, and to make wretches desperate: to
exalt magistrates into kings, kings into gods; to degrade subjects
to the rank of slaves, and slaves to the condition of brutes. The
history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon
the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in
which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which
the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak,
and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.
We may depend upon it that what men delight to read in books, they
will put in practice in reality.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110