For [p.278] him who is lacking in both insight and humour, who sees just what he sees and no more, who insists on making reality accord literally with his own formal experience, it is only prose. Prose is simply formally consistent experience, experience that is wholly bound to some determined standpoint, and, being this, in what it presents--that is, in its subject-matter--it is always, not adequate and inclusive, but partial and narrow and one-sided to reality. Prose, in short, sacrifices wholeness, that is to say, depth and breadth of view, to mere formal consistency. Poetry, at least in its subject-matter, is above formal consistency and above partiality. Through its very license poetry bears the message of what is real and whole. Poetry forever prefers reality to prosaic peace. So life is a comedy, rich and deep, and it is a poem, realistic and inclusive. It is, finally, a serious duty. To many, stern and oracular in their moral sense, the character of duty will seem not to fit at all well into a life that is always humorous, and that is never real and complete without being also poetic. But it does fit. Duty, they hold, is quite too sober ever to be mingled with humour or comedy, and quite too precise and explicit, too plainly prescribed, and in its spirit, when not in its letter, too legal ever to appeal to a poet or to be in any way associated with what appeals to him. But tell me, is the Puritan's notion of duty an accurate one? Is it the highest notion? Is it even profoundly moral? Has duty no chance at all on any other plan? In a word, are humour and poetry truly fatal to real duty? Why, even such questions must make the stern rigorists among us hope just a little, [p.279] though also these good men may still fear, for the relief that the questions seem to promise. Perhaps they mingle their hope with fear, only because, as I feel quite sure, they forget that comedy and poetry always bring more than mere relief. The real comedy and the true poetry of life are altogether too deep to do only that. They do indeed bring relief from the rigour and prosaic consistency of any specific programme or uniform, and so to any man they are always welcome, though he continue to suspect them of being wrong; but they bring also a responsibility that is fuller and larger and harder than the formal precept or prescription. Should the rigorist ever love his enemies? Not if he would be consistent. Should he ever find hope in what he fears? Should he ever laugh at his own manifest smallness? Yet these are real duties; they are great, transcendent duties; and, richly humorous as they are, only a poetic consciousness can ever appreciate them and truly feel their living obligation.