There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.[27]
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.[28]
[Footnote 27: _Hamlet_, I., v., 166-7.]
[Footnote 28: _Much Ado About Nothing_, V., i., 35-6.]
Such phrases sum up Shakespeare's habitual bearing to formal
philosophy. The consideration of causes, first principles, abstract
truths, never, in the dramatist's opinion, cured a human ill. The
futility of formal philosophy stands, from this point of view, in no
further need of demonstration.
II
But it is permissible to use the words philosopher and philosophy,
without scientific precision or significance, in the popular
inaccurate senses of shrewd observer and observation of life. By
philosophy we may understand common-sense wisdom about one's
fellow-men, their aspirations, their failures and successes. As soon
as we employ the word in that significance, we must allow that few men
were better philosophers than Shakespeare.
Shakespeare is what Touchstone calls the shepherd in _As You Like
It_--"a natural philosopher"--an observer by light of nature, an acute
expositor of phases of human life and feeling.
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