Chapter 11, Macbeth's Mistake, part 2

My imagination, as I told you, showed me that my mind would travel quickly and easily along the road opened up by supposing that Isra¨l means Rhythm. Looking back in my memory, I could not find the smallest indication that anybody had either come to grief himself or offended any Hebrew person by behaving as if the people of Israel were the People of Rhythm; and there is nothing in the Ten Commandments to suggest that there is any harm in doing so. So I started off on a glorious, easy, rapid spin; and arrived, without any mishap, at several very interesting bits of scenery.

Now let us take the case of the old Scotch legend of Macbeth, as told by Shakespeare. Macbeth and his wife appear to have been, at first, very well-intentioned, good people, as human beings go; better than most people; and enormously better than Jacob, or his mother, or his uncle, or most of the people belonging to him. Macbeth was a brilliant and successful soldier; his imagination suggested to him that he had it in him to rise rapidly to fortune and power. He might become Thane of Cawdor, and some day even King of Scotland. His imagination was so vivid that he pictured three old women going through some heathen incantation and predicting to him that he would be Thane of Cawdor and King. Here was a road open, along which it was quite sure that his mind would travel easily if he would let it do so. The question was: Should he let it go along that road? Now there were living at the time a Thane of Cawdor and a King of Scotland.