in defining it satisfactorily. Here I would venture to
suggest that it is a kind of magnificent sense of proportion, a
sense that relates the infinite greatness of the universe to the
finite smallness of man, and draws the inevitable conclusion as to
the importance of our joys and sorrows and labours. I am aware that
this definition errs on the side of vagueness; but possibly it may be
found to include the truth. Obviously, the natures of those who
possess this sense will tend to be static rather than dynamic, and it
is therefore against the limits imposed by this sense that
intellectual anarchists, among whom I would number Dale, and poets,
primarily rebel. But--and it is this rather than his undoubted
intellectual gifts or his dogmatic definitions of good and evil that
definitely separated Dale from the normal men--there can be no doubt
that he felt his lack of a sense of humour bitterly. In every word he
ever said, in every line he ever wrote, I detect a painful striving
after this mysterious sense, that enabled his neighbours, fools as he
undoubtedly thought them, to laugh and weep and follow the faith of
their hearts without conscious realisation of their own
existence and the problems it induced. By dint of study and strenuous
observation he achieved, as any man may achieve, a considerable
degree of wit, though to the last his ignorance of the audience whom
he served and despised, prevented him from judging the effect of his
sallies without experiment. But try as he might the finer jewel lay
far beyond his reach. Strong men fight themselves when they can find
no fitter adversary; but in all the history of literature there is no
stranger spectacle than this lifelong contest between Dale, the
intellectual anarch and pioneer of supermen, and Dale, the poor
lonely devil who wondered what made people happy.

I have said that the struggle was lifelong, but it must be added that
it was always unequal. The knowledge that in his secret heart he
desired this quality, the imperfection of imperfections, only served
to make Dale's attack on the complacency of his contemporaries more
bitter. He ridiculed their achievements, their ambitions, and their
love with a fury that awakened in them a mild curiosity, but by no
means affected their comfort. Moreover, the very vehemence with
which he demanded their contempt deprived him of much of his force as
a critic, for they justly wondered why a man should waste his
lifetime in attack