The thing carries itself to my maturer and gratified sense as with every symptom of soundness, an insolence of health and joy.

And from this precisely I deduce my moral; which is to the effect that, since our only way, in general, of knowing that we have had too much of anything is by FEELING that too much: so, by the same token, when we don't feel the excess (and I am contending, mind, that in "The Awkward Age" the multiplicity yields to the order) how do we know that the measure not recorded, the notch not reached, does represent adequacy or satiety?
The mere feeling helps us for certain degrees of congestion, but for exact science, that is for the criticism of "fine" art, we want the notation.

The notation, however, is what we lack, and the verdict of the mere feeling is liable to fluctuate.

In other words an imputed defect is never, at the worst, disengageable, or other than matter for appreciation--to come back to my claim for that felicity of the dramatist's case that his synthetic "whole" IS his form, the only one we have to do with.

I like to profit in his company by the fact that if our art has certainly, for the impression it produces, to defer to the rise and fall, in the critical temperature, of the telltale mercury, it still hasn't to reckon with the engraved thermometer-face.
HENRY JAMES.
THE AWKWARD AGE.