n. It is the one terrific cosmic fact.

Where illusion enters is where we, poor slaves of traditional
ratiocination, seek to turn these explosions of eternal lava into
eternal systems. The lava of life pours forth forever, but the systems
break and crumble; each one overwhelmed in its allotted time by a
new outrushing of abysmal energy.

The reiterated eruptions from the fathomless depths make up the
shifting material with which human civilisations build themselves
their illusive homes; but the wisest civilisations are the ones that
erect a hard, clear, bright wall of sceptical "suspension of
judgment," from the face of which the raging flood of primordial
energy may be flung back before it can petrify into any further
mischief.

Such a protective wall from the eruptive madness of primordial
barbarism, the scepticism of classical civilisation is forever
polishing and fortifying. Through the pearl-like glass of its
inviolable security we are able to mock the tempest-driven eagles
and the swirling glacial storms. We can amuse ourselves with the
illusions from which we are free. We can give the imagination
unbounded scope and the fancy unrestricted licence. We have
become happy children of our own self-created kingdom of heaven;
the kingdom of heaven which is the kingdom of disillusion.

And of this kingdom, Anatole France is surely the reigning king.
From the Olympian disenchantment of his tolerant urbanity, all
eruptive seriousness foams back spray-tossed and scattered. And yet
such a master of the art of "suspended judgment" was he, that he
permits himself to dally very pleasantly with the most passionate
illusions of the human race. He is too deep a sceptic even to remain
at the point of taking seriously his own aesthetic epicureanism.

This is where he differs from Oscar Wilde, from Walter Pater, from
Stendhal, from Remy de Gourmont, from Gabriele d'Annunzio. This
is where he differs from Montaigne. These great men build up an
egoism of grave subjectivity out of their suspicion of other people's
cults. They laugh at humanity but they do not laugh at themselves.
With the help of meta-physic they destroy metaphysic; only to
substitute for the gravity of idealism the gravity of Epicureanism.

But Anatole France has no gravity. He respects nothing; least of all
himself. That is why there is something singularly winning about
him which we miss in these others. There is something which palls
upon us and grows heavy