Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those
well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring
injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to
be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and
seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all
the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of
these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat
old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,[2] [p.276]
once published a book entitled, _Poetry, Comedy and Duty_. Exactly what
his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of
life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly
and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in
substance if not in form, can not be very far from his.
Thus, as to the comedy of life, we need only to reflect that where
extremes always meet, where there is always conflict, but conflict of
such a nature that the parties to it not only may change sides, but also
in a genuine sense are always on both sides, in such a life politics
cannot be alone in making strange bedfellows, but the opportunity for
comic situations must be unlimited. A life in which reality has no
residence, and truth no place where to lay its head, in which fools may
utter wisdom and the wise may speak folly, in which reformers are easily
confused with transgressors and death itself is said to be life, is
bound to be richly and deeply humorous. Of such a life there can be no
understanding, into it there can be no insight, without the keenest
sense of humour. To say no more, that doubter and believer are
companions as well as opponents, is cause for a deal of merriment--at
least among the gods.
But life's comedy is also a poem, and no one save a poet can truly
comprehend it. Even a metaphysician must be not merely a humorist, but
also a poet; perhaps he must be more the poet than any other. Poetry is
the portrayal of life through suggestion of harmony, or poise, among its
conflicting elements. Nor can life be seen, or known, in any more direct
[p.277] way; only the balance of opposites, which always makes the poem,
can possibly present it to our ken. Commonly men feel this when they
insist that all portrayal of life, or of reality in general, must be
dualistic. Dualism, be it the theologian's or the moralist's or the
metaphysician's, the statesman's or the scientist's, never is and never
can be anything but so much poetry; richly and deeply significant
always, and always alive with what is real, but always poetry, never
prose. Can a reality, that is real only if, to the forms of experience,
it is always a _tertium quid_, can such a reality ever be present to any
other than a poet's consciousness? Reality is not knowable face to face;
it is beyond the reach of positive knowledge; though dwelling in, and
informing all knowledge, it can never come to the surface of knowledge;
for so, to its own betrayal, it would take sides and get a habitation
and a name. True, by analogies one may conceive it, as the religious man
thinks of God's personality, or as the philosopher thinks of the unity
of his world, or as the scientist thinks of nature's law; but the
analogies are always so many tethers, and are accordingly necessarily
partial, whereas no whole can ever be quite in kind with any of its
parts. We may conceive reality, then, by the use of analogy--that is, by
projecting what we do know of one or another side of life beyond its
natural sphere; but such projection, at least for him who has both
insight and humour, who feels the limits of his knowledge and the
grandly transcendent way in which he has used his knowledge for the
crossing of some chasm, and the solution of some conflict in his life,
is poetry. 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.
For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is
both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than
just the principle, deeply true: _Whatever is, is right_. Men have
laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect
mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic
fact? But truth it is; _the_ truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal
comedy--the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem.
[1] As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great change
of the period. Cherished institutes, whether of politics or economics,
of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual life, were
becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting monarchy,
Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc.
[2] The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University.