Perhaps you mean by it the sum total of all human awarenesses of beauty. In that sense of prevailing loveliness we are all obscurely united. In those moments, moments of heavenly farce and unredeemable tragedy, we can forgive ourselves for being only human. But in these matters silence is the final eloquence. One does not argue with moonlight. Men talk of “finding God,” but no wonder it is difficult; He is hidden in that darkest of hiding-places, your own heart. You yourself are a part of Him. The chief danger is to be too prosaic. Any one who has ever done proof-reading knows the delicious fidelity and strict zeal and maddening literalness with which the professional corrector marks a galley-proof. How he construes the text according to his own rote and rigid scheme; how he resents any unusual use of words; how he is so busy querying things that look odd to him that he misses many of the downright errors. That is precisely the attitude of man toward the universe, which he is so daringly anxious to interpret in some comforting sense. The journalist, whatever his sins and stupidities, would hope to enjoy the text of life in the spirit of a collaborating author rather than presume to correct it. And he will not do any great poet, such as Christ, the dishonour of taking him too literally. We cannot hope until we have learned to despair. Let me remind you of some great lines by Andrew Marvell: My love is of a birth as rare As ’tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility. As lines, so loves oblique, may well Themselves in every angle greet: But ours, so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet. THE END FOOTNOTES: [A] Mr. C. E. Montague writes as follows of the origin of his novel _A Hind Let Loose_, a witty satire of newspaper life: “It arose from much study--in the course of my daily work--of the editorial articles of the best-reputed English papers. I found that they consisted, to a wonderfully large percentage, of certain stock expressions of positiveness, dislike and contempt. These, I noticed, were so general that they constantly recurred in all sorts of discussions on various subjects, and the fancy took me that their use could be carried further and further until all reference to any particular topic vanished and nothing but quite general positiveness remained, the Olympian mentality and temper just going on asserting themselves for assertion’s sake.” [B] There is a very able book called _The Gospel According to Judas_, written by a professor at a Western college, which has circulated in MS. among publishers for ten years, without yet finding one who is willing to take a chance on its very remarkable wit and uniquely original conception of the New Testament story. I have often wondered whether it will ever get printed. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Obvious typographical errors have been standardized.