ABSTRACT
That is Mr. Huxley's faith. In the non sequiturs of the universe he finds a continual reproach to the thinking man: but, for the present, non sequitur is the too frequent answer to human investigation. The paragraph concludes:
Irony is the moralist's answer to a non sequitur. It follows that much of Mr. Huxley's writing is ironical. 'Ethics in Andalusia' and 'To the Puritan all Things are Impure' show him at his happiest in this vein. He is no irresponsible Jix-baiter: no one could see and express with more deadly seriousness the incompatibles dividing the late D. H. Lawrence and Mrs. Grundy, the system of thought which distinguishes morally between the Graeco-Roman and the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary for the expression of certain facts. Music at Night, however, is by no means pre occupied with these matters:
We are grateful to the artist, especially the musician, for saying clearly what we have always felt, but never been able to express. Listening to expressive music, we have, not of course the artist's original experience (which is quite beyond us, for grapes do not grow on thistles), but the best experience in its kind of which our nature is capable-a better and completer experience than in fact we ever had before listening to the music.
