Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/538

 522 E. H. DONKIN : the opposite quality of commensurability is found neverthe- less to hold its own with complete strength. Thus we have, as usual, two items : (1) the apparent incommensurability of sphere and cylinder, (2) their proved commensurability. These two items, though so highly opposed to each other, are yet found to coincide, and to be in fact one ; for where the first is, there the second is. Thus as before we have unity subsisting in spite of antagonistic variety. In this way natural law, or cause, like various other qualities, can supply material for the aesthetic sense, by subsisting in spite of antagonism : though any one cause as strictly conceived, looked at alone and in itself, is nil to the aesthetic sense. Eecurring to the topic of the ultimate hidden meaning of the universe, the question seems worth suggesting whether it is the ascending path for ^Esthetic to come to depend more and more on the sense that each of the dual items im- plies and represents this one hidden meaning, and has that great bond of sameness with the other. Rudimentary aesthetic depends on mere sense-sameness. As aesthetic attains greater development the link of sameness in difference can be, not merely sensation, but also meaning ; a relevance deeper than bare sense. And among all meanings the supreme is the meaning of the universe : why it is what it is. If then aesthetic came to rest more and more on that one supreme link of sameness, the great unity of meaning which we conceive to subsist in all phenomena, it would perhaps thereby rise to its highest. To give an illustration : one of the proverbial triplets attributed to the ancient Welsh poet Llywarch Hen runs thus as translated in Skene's edition : Rain without, near is the shelter, The furze yellow ; the cow-parsnip withered and dry ; God the Creator ! Why hast thou made a coward ? These lines have a certain mystic effectiveness even taken alone : and to say so is equivalent to saying that we believe that there is a common hidden relevance in the apparently irrelevant statements. And the only relevance one can conceive is that the two sets of phenomena, the visible surroundings and the existence of cowards, though so different, are the same in that they alike imply as their necessary condition the sum total of all things. Its scope and meaning, hidden in each, is in some way specially well expressed by the concurrence of the two. Now here, I con- fess, the "beauty" is to me totally apart from immediate