And further it is concerned, I should say, not merely to contrive aesthetic unities of light and shade, to fashion ideally formal tragedies out of the elements of a world that is merely chaotic and hideous; it is concerned with a strange and compelling attribute of the world itself. Such I take to be the spirit of the mature Shakespeare, for instance in King Lear, and again the spirit of Hardy at his best. The novels and poems of Thomas Hardy were once thought to be merely disillusioned. But does the memorable description of Egdon Heath express only the weariness of a mind trapped in a world of drab and futility; or does it symbolise the objective excellence (there is no other phrase for it) that is sometimes discovered beyond disillusion? And in Marty South and Giles Winterborne, and again in the Reddleman in The Return of the Native, do we not find a very different mood from mere world-weariness? These and others of the "strong" characters of Hardy's fiction preserve both in good times and in bad, and even during their most intense emotions, an unassailable peace of mind, such as is sometimes the expression of religious faith, but in these cases demands some other explanation. And surely this attitude of purged admiration is Hardy's own attitude, though he cannot justify it, and often adulterates it with his intellectual pessimism. Again, such tortured characters as Tess and Jude were thought once to signify nothing but futility; but surely the novels in which they are set are misread if they are regarded as protracted whimperings. More truly they are hymns of praise, spontaneous acts of adoration directed upon the world itself. Two on a Tower, even though it perhaps fails as a novel, expresses even more fervently and unambiguously that same disinterested salutation of the objective world for its own sake, quite apart from its friendliness or unfriendliness to man. Surely the whole work of Hardy is moved throughout by a spirit of admiration, even of worship, which is no less remarkable for having been perhaps unintelligible to Hardy himself.

Tennyson, harassed by the problems of his day, could but cling to the faith that somehow in the end the universe would fulfill our demands of it; but Hardy accepted the universe as it appeared to him to be, and was rewarded almost in spite of himself by a vision more splendid than Tennyson's. No doubt he was unduly influenced by a crude metaphysics; yet in spite of that he was the forerunner not merely of modern disillusion but also of modern worship. Meredith also, though chiefly humanist and optimist, could regard man with detachment. Thus, while in the myth of Earth and Man he symbolises truly the relation of the evolutionary process to human mentality, in "The Thrush in February," especially in the last two stanzas, he glimpses a value which is not dependent on the triumph of life's enterprise. In fact both Hardy and Meredith seem to have experienced, even though they failed to interpret, the second mood of the modem spirit, the fourth of those movements of thought which were started by the conflict of science and romance. Meredith dimly experienced a value other than victory, but could never distinguish it from his faith in the future. Hardy, on the other hand, saw the universe as a sorry muddle, yet worshipped it while he condemned it.

The attitude of disinterested admiration is, I suppose, an element in classicism. Certainly it derives in part from the Stoics; and again in part from the more objectivistic and classical moods of Christianity. But today it is less easily learned through classical study or devotional exercise than through such non- human interests as mathematics and physical science. Mr. Bertrand Russell has well expressed the fervour which may illuminate such activities; though sometimes, as in A Free Man's Worship, he adulterates this ecstatic detachment with an irrelevant and self-conscious romanticism over man's supposed tragic fate. This is a double error; for in the first place the mood is not focused on man at all; and secondly it does not necessarily involve a pessimistic view, though perhaps only through tragedy can it be attained to-day. In itself it is an interest, not in man for his own sake, but in the world within which man is a striving member. Consequently, it regards man neither with hopeful assertiveness nor with submissiveness or heroic resignation.

Yet, though it is in this sense a mood of complete detachment from all striving and all strivers, emphatically it is no mere apathy, nor does it consent to inactivity. But, while espousing earnestly all the values that emerge from the nature of life and mind, it yet maintains an inviolable peace; for whatever befalls, it has a vision of this actual world as excellent. Mr. George Santayana, in Platonism and the Spiritual Life, has given an account of this attitude more purified than Mr. Russell's because more dispassionate. But by describing it as a disintoxication from all values he has confused with mere apathy what is essentially a value-experience, though not merely an experience of biological fulfilment.

Indeed, this mood of ecstatic yet dispassionate admiration is akin to that "sporting" attitude which, prizing the game more than victory, yet strives in every fibre. It appreciates the universe as though it were art, perhaps tragic art. But let us repeat that it is not tragical in essence. Not only in defeat, but in victory also, we may enjoy the game for its own sake.