The difficulty which I
mentioned above lies in the fact that, while every one has a clear
conception of what they mean by the phrase, no one has yet
succeeded 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.
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