would be as incomprehensible as a Beethoven symphony.  With his usual genius for condensation, Shakspere has in those two lines given the essentials of true jealousy—­suspicion causing agony rather than anger, and proceeding from love, not from hate.  The fear, distress, humiliation, anguish of modern jealousy are in the mind of the injured husband.  He suffers torments, but has no wish to torment either of the guilty ones.  There are, indeed, even in civilized countries, husbands who slay erring wives; but they are not civilized husbands:  like Othello, they still have the taint of the savage in them.  Civilized husbands resort to separation, not to mutilation or murder; and in dismissing the guilty wife, they punish themselves more than her—­for she has shown by her actions that she does not love him and therefore cannot feel the deepest pang of the separation.  There is no anger, no desire for revenge.

     How comes this gentle concord in the world,
     That hatred is so far from jealousy?

It comes in the world through love—­through the fact that a man—­or a woman—­who truly loves, cannot tolerate even the thought of punishing one who has held first place in his or her affections.  Modern law emphasizes the essential point when it punishes adultery because of “alienation of the affections.”

A VIRTUOUS SIN

Thus, whereas the “jealousy” of the savage who is transported by his sense of proprietorship to bloody deeds and to revenge is a most ignoble passion, incompatible with love, the jealousy of modern civilization has become a noble passion, justified by moral ideals and affection—­“a kind of godly jealousy which I beseech you call a virtuous sin.”

Where Love reigns, disturbing Jealousy
Doth call himself Affection’s sentinel.

And let no one suppose that by purging itself of bloody violence, hatred, and revenge, and becoming the sentinel of affection, jealousy has lost any of its intensity.  On the contrary, its depth is quintupled.  The bluster and fury of savage violence is only a momentary ebullition of sensual passion, whereas the anguish of jealousy as we feel it is

            Agony unmix’d, incessant gall,
     Corroding every thought, and blasting all
     Love’s paradise.

Anguish of mind is infinitely more intense than mere physical pain, and the more cultivated the mind, the deeper is its capacity for such “agony unmix’d.”  Mental anguish doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw the inwards, and create a condition in which “not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world shall ever medicine” the victim to that sleep which he enjoyed before.  His heart is turned to stone; he strikes it and it hurts his hand.  Trifles light as air are proofs to him that his suspicions are realities, and life is no longer worth living.

                             O now for ever
     Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! 
     Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars
     That make ambition virtue!