It is, we believe, the act which Mr Hardy himself has tried
to formulate in the phrase which is the title of one of his books of
poems--_Moments of Vision_.
Only those who do not read Mr Hardy could make the mistake of supposing
that on his lips such a phrase had a mystical implication. Between
belief and logic lies a third kingdom, which the mystics and the
philosophers alike are too eager to forget--the kingdom of art, no less
the residence of truth than the two other realms, and to some, perhaps,
more authentic even than they. Therefore when we expand the word
'vision' in the phrase to 'aesthetic vision' we mean, not the perception
of beauty, at least in the ordinary sense of that ill-used word, but the
apprehension of truth, the recognition of a complete system of valid
relations incapable of logical statement. Such are the acts of unique
apprehension which Mr Hardy, we believe, implied by his title. In a
'moment of vision' the poet recognises in a single separate incident of
life, life's essential quality.
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