The conditions of our being! If we accept, affirm, profoundly rest in what is presented to us, we have the first condition of that repose which is the essence of the aesthetic experience. And from this highest demand can be viewed the hierarchy of the lesser perfections which go to make up the "perfect moment" of literature. Instead of reaching this point by successive eliminations, we might indeed have reached it in one stride. The perfect moment across the dialect of life, the moment of perfect life, must be in truth that in which we touch the confines of our being, look upon our world, all in all, as revealed in some great moment, and see that it is good--that we grasp it, possess it, that it is akin to us, that it is identical with our deepest wills. The work that grasps the conditions of our being gives ourselves back to us completed. In the conditions of our being in a less profound sense may be found the further means to the perfect moment. Thus the progress of events, the development of feelings, must be in harmony with our natural processes. The development, the rise, complication, expectation, gratification, the suspense, climax, and drop of the great novel, correspond to the natural functioning of our mental processes. It is an experience that we seek, multiplied, perfected, expanded--the life moment of a man greater than we. This, too, is the ultimate meaning of the demands of style. Lucidity, indeed, there must be,-- identity with the thought; but besides the value of the thought in its approximation to the conditions of our being, we seek the vividness of that thought,--the perfect moment of apprehension, as well as of experience. It is the beauty of style to be lucid; but the beauty of lucidity is to reinforce the springs of thought. Even to the minor elements of style, the tone-coloring, the rhythm, the melody,--the essence of beauty, that is, of the perfect moment, is given by the perfecting of the experience. The beauty of liquids is their ease and happiness of utterance. The beauty of rhythm is its aiding and compelling power, on utterance and thought. There is a sensuous pleasure in a great style; we love to mouth it, for it is made to mouth. As Flaubert says somewhat brutally, "Je ne said qu'une phrase est bonne qu'apres l'avoir fait passer par mon gueuloir."