The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

His loss of innocence through becoming conscious of the real world has the same consequences for Mr. Pickwick as a fictional character as recovering his sanity has for Don Quixote; in becoming ethically serious, both cease to be aesthetically comic, that is to say, interesting to the reader, and they must pass away, Don Quixote by dying, Mr. Pickwick by retiring from view.

Both novels are based upon the presupposition that there is a difference between the Law and Grace, the Righteous man and the Holy man: this can only be expressed indirectly by a comic contradiction in which the innocent hero comes into collision without appearing, in his own eyes, to suffer. The only way in which their authors can compel the reader to inter­pret this correcdy—neither to ignore the sign nor to take it as a direct sign—is, in the end, to take off the comic mask and say: "The Game, the make-believe is over: players and spec­tators alike must now return to reality. What you have heard was but a tall story."

POSTSCRIPT: THE FRIVOLOUS & THE EARNEST

An aesthetic religion (polytheism) draws no distinction be­tween what is frivolous and what is serious because, for it, all existence is, in the last analysis, meaningless. The whims of the gods and, behind them, the whim of the Fates, are the ultimate arbiters of all that happens. It is immediately frivolous because it is ultimately in despair.

A frivolity which is innocent, because unaware that anything serious exists, can be charming, and a frivolity which, precisely because it is aware of what is serious, refuses to take seriously that which is not serious, can be profound. What is so distaste­ful about the Homeric gods is that they are well aware of human suffering but refuse to take it seriously. They take the lives of men as frivolously as their own; they meddle with the former for fun, and then get bored.

When Zeus had brought the Trojans and Hector close to the ships, he left them beside the ships to bear the toil and woe unceasingly, and he himself turned his shining eyes away, gazing afar at the land of the horse-rearing Thracians and the Mysians, who fight in close array, and the noble Hippomolgoi who live on milk, and the Abioi, most righteous of men.

(Iliad, Book XIII.)

They hill us for their sport. If so, no human sportsman would receive one of the gods in his house: they shoot men sitting and out of season.

If Homer had tried reading the Iliad to the gods on Olympus, they would either have started to fidget and presently asked if he hadn't got something a little lighter, or, taking it as a comic poem, would have roared with laughter or possibly, even, reacting like ourselves to a tear-jerking movie, have poured pleasing tears.

The songs of Apollo: the lucky improvisations of an amateur.

The only Greek god who does any work is Hephaestus, and he is a lame cuckold.

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Christianity draws a distinction be­tween what is frivolous and what is serious, but allows the former its place. What it condemns is not frivolity but idolatry, that is to say, taking the frivolous seriously.

The past is not to be taken seriously (Let the dead bury their deadj nor the future (Take no thought for the morrowonly the present instant and that, not for its aesthetic emotional content but for its historic decisiveness. (Now is the appointed time

Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.

That is why so many actes gratuites are criminal: a man asserts his freedom by disobeying a law and retains a sense of self-importance because the law he has disobeyed is an impor­tant one. Much crime is magic, an attempt to make free with necessity.

An alternative to criminal magic is the innocent game. Games are actes gratuites in which the players obey rules chosen by themselves. Games are freer than crimes because the rules of a game are arbitrary and moral laws are not; but they are less important.

The rules of a game give it importance to those who play it by making it difficult, a test of skill. This means, however, that a game can only be important to those who have the particular physical or mental skills which are required to play it, and the gift of such skills is a matter of chance.