"To be?"--"Or _not_ to be?" contend the two at every crossing of the tangled meshes of existence, and neither disputant is ever convinced by the other's logic.
"To sleep"--says one. "Perchance to dream," replies the other coldly; and so gives pause to Hamlet's swift intentions.
Which is the real man? The Hamlet whose soul lusts for sudden brute revenge, whose promptings are the instinctive play of the natural man, or that frigid censor who checks the impulses of the first speaker and chills him with cold reasons and balancings of right and wrong, so that the sword falls from his nerveless hand at the very moment of opportunity? Or after all, is the real man the one whose actions are a continual endeavour to steer between the two promptings; the Hamlet whose doings are not in direct answer to either voice--are but furious and confused outbursts of indecision?
If it were at all possible to decide between the two, one would incline to think that the second voice, that chilling critic, was another self, alien to us, though entrenched in the very depths of the soul--was the _not me_, in everlasting opposition to the _me_--was the past warring with the present.
The warm, impulsive, blundering _me_ we know, but who is that other? Whence comes this double, this _alter ego_, this bosom's lord, and strange, nameless ghost who haunts the house of life? How many thousand deaths have we died to give him life? For he is inexpressibly aged, infinitely sophisticated; and while the _me_ still crowns its locks with youth's golden illusions, he is grey with knowledge and hoary with disenchantment. Though a part of our most intimate selves, he is not at one with us. He sympathizes with none of our enthusiasms, is tempted by none of our sins.... Sins!... what should he do eating forbidden fruit who is all compounded of the knowledge of good and evil?
"Ye shall be as gods, having eaten of that tree"--and like a god he sits in the dusk of the soul's seat, knowing the past, predicating the future, calmly beholding the fulfilling of our destiny. And yet is his grim wisdom of no avail, since--a shadowy Cassandra--he warns in vain. His deity-ship is of no more worth than that of the Olympian heavens, which might punish or reward, but could not divert the decrees of a power higher than itself. It is indeed the fate of all gods to have their creations caught from between their shaping hands by the blind, fumbling fingers with the shears. Gods may teach; may command; may ban or bless, but the being once made is Fate's creature, not theirs.