| The thousand painful steps at last are trod, |
| At last the temple's difficult door we win. |
| Perfect upon his pedestal, the god |
| Freezes us hopeless when we enter in. |
The little girl is tasting this experience. The contemplation of elastic joints, mechanical eyes, and waxen complexion warmed the cockles of her heart, but the embodiment of these in a palpable doll freezes her hopeless. If the poet, with more imagination, suffers too, and the highest natures—those which we call the transcendental—whiff the sadness that lies in the attainment of the perfect, surely the unimaginative mass of mankind can be excused if they find the inter-lunar regions chilly.
In reckless moments I wonder whether the Greek statues did not suffer more happily at the hands of fate when they lost their arms and heads and legs than we are accustomed to think; whether their dilapidation has not given them a place in our hearts instead of merely in our heads; has not couched them in our love instead of merely pedestaled them in our reverence.
Or, to take an illustration from a lower plane, may it not be that we get a keener pleasure out of eating an imperfect apple? It is neither the best possible apple, which would be perfect, nor the worst possible apple, which would have a kind of negative perfection; it has a worm at the core; but I wonder whether we do not enjoy it more because we have to eat the more carefully to keep from eating him. Besides, he arouses in our mind all sorts of questionings. Why is he there? What kind of worm is he? How did he get in? How would he have got out if we had not ousted him? And—note this—what sort of an apple would it have been if he had taken up his residence elsewhere?
I am rather proud of this little apologue of the apple. For the perfect apple could have roused no queries which the defective apple does not. The same subtle influences went to make both: the same elements, the same forces, the same chemical processes. But the defective apple has in addition to all these—the worm.
There is 'some strangeness' even 'in beauty.' The perfect rhythm is intolerable. We demand chiaroscuro in life as in color. The preciousness of the ointment is the more evident for the fly. 'We love people for their vices,' so the vices do not make them despicable.
If the gods that sit above have a sense of humor, they must find us grown men and women as funny and as sad as we find the boys and girls and dogs. Not knowing the sentiments of the gods, we have to content ourselves with those of the poets and humorists who, we fondly imagine, have in them something of the god-like vision. They look at humanity from above. And they find that the spectacle of humanity trying to be what it cannot be, facing both ways, on the threshold of heaven casting a longing, lingering look behind, is comic and tragic in its very essence; for comedy and tragedy differ chiefly in degree. In the imperfection of humanity lie its tragedy and its humor. Without it, this would be a happier world; but with it, it is a merrier.
