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“The uniqueness of Iago, like the uniqueness of modern war, does not lie in the spirit of destruction. That has always been common enough. It lies in the genius he dedicates to destructive ends. Modern war would not recognize itself in the portraits of Shakespeare’s classical and feudal fighters, in Hector and Hotspur, in Faulconbridge and Coriolanus, or in Othello himself. But let it look in the glass and it will behold Iago. In him Shakespeare reveals , with clarity of nightmare, the unrestrained intellect, instead of being opposite of force, and an antidote for it, as much of the modern world thinks, is force functioning on a nother plane. It is the immoral equivalent of war, and as certain to clead to it in due seasons as Iago’s machinations were to lead to death. “All other knowledge is hurtful,” says Montaigne, “to him who has not the science of honesty and goodness.” — Harold C. Goddard