struck me; he replies, “Not at all.  You may, if you like, describe this thing as an animal and sexual instinct, designed for certain natural purposes; that is your philosophical or zooelogical theory about it.  What it is, beyond all doubt of any kind, is a divine and sacred and incredible vision.”  The fact that it is an animal necessity only comes to the naturalistic philosopher after looking abroad, studying its origins and results, constructing an explanation of its existence, more or less natural and conclusive.  The fact that it is a spiritual triumph comes to the first errand boy who happens to feel it.  If a lad of seventeen falls in love and is struck dead by a hansom cab an hour afterwards, he has known the thing as it is, a spiritual ecstasy; he has never come to trouble about the thing as it may be, a physical destiny.  If anyone says that falling in love is an animal thing, the answer is very simple.  The only way of testing the matter is to ask those who are experiencing it, and none of those would admit for a moment that it was an animal thing.

Maeterlinck’s appearance in Europe means primarily this subjective intensity; by this the materialism is not overthrown:  materialism is undermined.  He brings, not something which is more poetic than realism, not something which is more spiritual than realism, not something which is more right than realism, but something which is more real than realism.  He discovers the one indestructible thing.  This material world on which such vast systems have been superimposed—­this may mean anything.  It may be a dream, it may be a joke, it may be a trap or temptation, it may be a charade, it may be the beatific vision:  the only thing of which we are certain is this human soul.  This human soul finds itself alone in a terrible world, afraid of the grass.  It has brought forth poetry and religion in order to explain matters; it will bring them forth again.  It matters not one atom how often the lulls of materialism and scepticism occur; they are always broken by the reappearance of a fanatic.  They have come in our time:  they have been broken by Maeterlinck.

RUSKIN[2]

I do not think anyone could find any fault with the way in which Mr. Collingwood has discharged his task, except, of course, Mr. Ruskin himself, who would certainly have scored through all the eulogies in passionate red ink and declared that his dear friend had selected for admiration the very parts of his work which were vile, brainless, and revolting.  That, however, was merely Ruskin’s humour, and one of the deepest disappointments with Mr. Collingwood is that he, like everyone else, fails to appreciate Ruskin as a humourist.  Yet he was a great humourist:  half the explosions which are solemnly scolded as “one-sided” were simply meant to be one-sided, were mere laughing experiments in language.  Like a woman, he saw the humour of his own prejudices, did not sophisticate them by logic, but deliberately exaggerated them by rhetoric.  One tenth of his paradoxes would have made the fortune of a modern young man with gloves of an art yellow.  He was as fond of nonsense as Mr. Max Beerbohm.  Only ... he was fond of other things too.  He did not ask humanity to dine on pickles.