Note 170 — LECTURE VIII
Reading edition
i. ii. 1 f. Shakespeare seems to have in mind the idea expressed in the speech of Ulysses about the dependence of the world on degree, order, system, custom, and about the chaos which would result from the free action of appetite, the 'universal wolf' (Troilus and Cr. i. iii. 83 f.). Cf. the contrast between 'particular will' and 'the moral laws of nature and of nations,' ii. ii. 53, 185 ('nature' here of course is the opposite of the 'nature' of Edmund's speech).