In Act I Scene 3, Macbeth and Banquo learn of their fortunes thanks to their "chance" meeting with the weird sisters upon the heath. Neither really believe the prophesies given them. It has already occurred to Macbeth to murder Duncan, but the idea disturbs him greatly. He settles his mind (for the time being), but noting: "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir." That is, if he is...
In Act I Scene 3, Macbeth and Banquo learn of their fortunes thanks to their "chance" meeting with the weird sisters upon the heath. Neither really believe the prophesies given them. It has already occurred to Macbeth to murder Duncan, but the idea disturbs him greatly. He settles his mind (for the time being), but noting: "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir." That is, if he is fated to be king, it'll happen to him even if he does nothing to make it happen quicker. He's still a good man here. He knows he could "play foully" for the crown, but he doesn't have to; that's how fate works--it comes true no matter what you do.
Compare this, then, to his attitude in Act V Scene 5, where he no longer feels much of anything. For example, he hears the cries of women from within the castle, and says:
I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me.
His conscience has been seared, and nothing bothers him anymore. He's no longer concerned with being good and holy. Even when they tell him his wife is dead, he seems oddly unmoved. He merely notes that it would have happened at some point, anyway, but he doesn't have time to grieve now, anyway. He does, however, note (in possibly the most poetic expression of this idea in the English language) that life is ultimately meaningless. He has lost his religion, his belief in goodness and loyalty and doing what is right. Everything meaningful to him is lost, except perhaps his own life.
His desires were for power, and his lady pushed him to do the unthinkable to get it. The lessons he has learned is that what he has done to get that power and to keep it ultimately were not worth it.
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