gard the whole universe as tragic; for the pain
and dreariness and devilishness in the universe is so unspeakable
that any "beauty" which includes such things must be a tragic
beauty. Not to recognize this and to attempt to "accept" the universe
as something which is not tragic, is to outrage and insult the
aesthetic sense.

But we may regard the universe as tragic without regarding it as
"beautiful" and yet remain under the power of the aesthetic energy.
For there exists a primordial aspect of the aesthetic vision which is
not concerned with the beautiful at all, or only with the beautiful in
so wide a latitude as to transcend all ordinary usage, and this is our
sense of humour.

The universe as the human soul perceives it, is horribly and most
tragically humorous. Man is the laughing animal; and the "perilous
stuff" which tickles his aesthetic sense with a revelation of
outrageous comedy has its roots in the profoundest abyss. This
humorous aspect of the system of things is just as primordial and
intrinsic as what we call the "beautiful." The human soul is able to
pour the whole stream of its complex vision through this fantastic
casement. It knows how to respond to the "diablerie" of the abysses
with a reciprocal gesture. It is able to answer irony with irony; and
to the appalling grotesqueness and indecency of the universe it has
the power of retorting with an equally shameless leer.

But this sardonic aspect of human humour, though tallying truly
enough with one eternal facet of the universe, does not exhaust the
humorous potentiality of the aesthetic sense. There is a "good" irony
as well as a "wicked" irony. Humour can be found in alliance with
the emotion of love as well as with the emotion of hate. Humour can
be kind as well as cruel; and there is no doubt that the aesthetic
spectacle of the world is as profoundly humorous in a quite normal
sense as it is beautiful or noble or horrible.

Turning now to that primeval attribute of the complex vision which
we call emotion, we certainly enter the presence of something
whose existence cannot be denied or explained away. Directly we
grow conscious of ourselves, directly we use reason or instinct or
the aesthetic sense, we are aware of an emotional reaction. This
emotional reaction may be resolved into a basic duality, the activity
of love and the activity of the opposite of love.

I say "the opposite of love" deliberately; because I am anxious to
indicate, in