But then you can't keep my pound of flesh with your
blood--you owe it to me. It is your business to deliver the goods.
Deliver it then--with or without blood--deliver it." The Portia
scratches her head, and thinks again.
What's the solution? There is no solution. But still there is a
choice. There's a choice between a mess and a tragedy. If Plebs and
Bully hang on one to each end of the bone, and pull for grim life,
they will at last tear the bone to atoms: in short, destroy the whole
material substance of life, and so perish by accident, no better than
a frog under the wheel of destiny. That may be a disaster, but it is
only a mess for all that.
On the other hand, if they have a fight to fight they might really
drop the bone. Instead of wrangling the bone to bits they might
really go straight for one another. They are like hostile parties on
board a ship, who both proceed to scuttle the ship so as to sink the
other party. Down goes the ship, with all the bally lot on board. A
few survivors swim and squeal among the bubbles--and then silence.
It is too much to suppose that the combatants will ever drop the
obvious old bone. But it is not too much to imagine that some men
might acknowledge the bone to be merely a pretext, and hollow _casus
belli_. If we really could know what we were fighting for, if we
if we could deeply believe in what we were fighting for, then the
struggle might have dignity, beauty, satisfaction for us.
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