It is a suicidal decision
for his involuntary soul to have arrived at. Yet it is inevitable. The
great religious, philosophic tide, which has been swelling all through
the Middle Ages, had brought him there.
The question, to be or not to be, which Hamlet puts himself, does not
mean, to live or not to live. It is not the simple human being who puts
himself the question, it is the supreme I, King and Father. To be or not
to be King, Father, in the Self supreme? And the decision is, not to be.
It is the inevitable philosophic conclusion of all the Renaissance. The
deepest impulse in man, the religious impulse, is the desire to be
immortal, or infinite, consummated. And this impulse is satisfied in
fulfilment of an idea, a steady progression. In this progression man is
satisfied, he seems to have reached his goal, this infinity, this
immortality, this eternal being, with every step nearer which he takes.
And so, according to his idea of fulfilment, man establishes the whole
order of life. If my fulfilment is the fulfilment and establishment of
the unknown divine Self which I am, then I shall proceed in the
realizing of the greatest idea of the self, the highest conception of
the I, my order of life will be kingly, imperial, aristocratic.
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