[_Macbeth rises with external deeds and sinks with internal conflicts._]
Again: that Macbeth's union of superficial nobility with real moral worthlessness is connected with the purely practical bent of his mind will be the more evident the wider the survey which is taken of his character and actions. It may be observed that Macbeth's spirits always rise with evil deeds: however he may have wavered in the contemplation of crime, its execution strings him up to the loftiest tone. [=ii.= i, from 31; and =iii.= ii, from 39.] This is especially clear in the Dagger Scene, and in the scene in which he darkly hints to his wife the murder of Banquo, which is in a brief space to be in actual perpetration. As he feels the moment of crime draw near, his whole figure seems to dilate, the language rises, and the imagery begins to flow. Like a poet invoking his muse, Macbeth calls on seeling night to scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day. He has an eye to dramatic surroundings for his dark deeds.
Now, o'er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout, _And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it._
The man who had an hour or two before been driven from the table of his guests by the mere thought of a crime moves to the deed itself with the exalted language of a Hebrew prophet. On the other hand, in his spiritual struggles there is a simpleness that sometimes suggests childishness. [=ii.= ii. 31.] His trouble is that he could not say 'Amen' when the sleepers cried 'God bless us'; his conscience seems a voice outside him; [=ii.= ii. 35-46.] finally, the hardened warrior dare not return to the darkness and face the victim he had so exultingly done to death.
Macbeth, then, is the embodiment of one side of the antithesis with which we started; his is pre-eminently the practical nature, moulded in a world of action, but uninfluenced by the cultivation of the inner life. Yet he is not perfect as a man of action: for the practical cannot reach its perfection without the assistance of the inner life. [_Two flaws in Macbeth as an embodiment of the practical: his superstition;_] There are two flaws in Macbeth's completeness. For one, his lack of training in thought has left him without protection against the superstition of his age. He is a passive prey to supernatural imaginings. [=v.= v. 10.] He himself tells us he is a man whose senses would cool to hear a night-shriek, and his fell of hair rouse at a dismal treatise. And we see throughout the play how he never for an instant doubts the reality of the supernatural appearances: [e.g. =iii.= iv. 60; =i.= iii. 107, 122.] a feature the more striking from its contrast with the scepticism of Lady Macbeth, and the hesitating doubt of Banquo. [_and his helplessness under suspense._] [=iii.= i. 6.] Again: no active career can be without its periods when action is impossible, and it is in such periods that the training given by the intellectual life makes itself felt, with its self-control and passive courage. All this Macbeth lacks: in suspense he has no power of self-restraint. [compare =i.= iii. 137, and =iii.= ii. 16.] When we come to trace him through the stages of the action we shall find that one of these two flaws springing out of Macbeth's lack of the inner life, his superstition and his helplessness in suspense, is at every turn the source of his betrayal.