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However whole-heartedly Shakespeare rebukes the excesses and illogical
pretensions to which the lack of moral or intellectual discipline
exposes patriotism, he reserves his austerest censure for the
disavowal of the patriotic instinct altogether. One of the greatest of
his plays is practically a diagnosis of the perils which follow in the
train of a wilful abnegation of the normal instinct. In _Coriolanus_
Shakespeare depicts the career of a man who thinks that he can, by
virtue of inordinate self-confidence and belief in his personal
superiority over the rest of his countrymen, safely abjure and defy
the common patriotic instinct, which, after all, keeps the State in
being. "I'll never," says Coriolanus,
"Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand
As if a man were author of himself,
And knew no other kin."[37]
[Footnote 37: _Coriolanus_, V., iii., 34-7.]
Coriolanus deliberately suppresses the patriotic instinct, and, with
greater consistency than others who have at times followed his
example, joins the fighting ranks of his country's enemies by way of
illustrating his sincerity. His action proves to be in conflict with
the elementary condition of social equilibrium.
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