_Caliban's Philosophy_
Polytheism easily found a place for such views as these, inasmuch as it
could explain the unseemly aspects of Nature offhand by a reference to
malevolent deities. With Browning's Caliban, in his meditations upon
Setebos, that god whom he conceived in his own image, the recklessness
of Nature is mockery engendered half in spite, half in mere wantonness.
Setebos, he says,
"is strong and Lord,
Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;
Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
And two worms he whose nippers end in red;
As it likes me each time, I do: So He."
Such is the kind of philosophy that commends itself to the beastly
Caliban, as he sprawls in the mire with small eft things creeping down
his back. His half-fledged mind can conceive no higher principle of
action--nothing more artistic, nothing more masterful--than wanton
mockery, and naturally he attributes it to his God; it is for him a
sufficient explanation of that little fragment of the Cosmic Process
with which he comes into contact.
[Illustration]