loof, sympathetic
and arrogant, suffering and joyous; and in this relation we see
Aristophanes as the forerunner of Shakespeare, his only one. We see also
that the whole present aesthetic of earth is based in Homer. We live and
grow in the world of consciousness bequeathed to us by him; and if we
grow beyond it through deeper Shakespearean ardours, it is because those
beyond are rooted in the broad basis of the Homeric imagination. To
shift that basis is to find the marshes of primitive night and fear
alone beneath the feet: Christianity.

And here we return to the question of the immorality of _Lysistrata_.
First we may inquire: is it possible for a man whose work has so
tremendous a significance in the spiritual development of mankind--and I
do not think anyone nowadays doubts that a work of art is the sole
stabilizing force that exists for life--is it possible for a man who
stands so grandly at head of an immense stream of liberating effort to
write an immoral work? Surely the only enduring moral virtue which can
be claimed is for that which moves to more power, beauty and delight in
the future? The plea that the question of changing customs arises is not
valid, for customs ratified by Aristophanes, by Rabelais, by
Shakespeare, have no right to change. If they have changed, let us try
immediately to return from our disgraceful refinements to the nobler and
more rarefied heights of lyric laughter, tragic intensity, and wit, for
we cannot have the first two without the last. And anyhow, how can a
social custom claim precedence over the undying material of the senses
and the emotions of man, over the very generating forces of life?

How could the humanistic emotions, such as pity, justice, sympathy,
exist save as pacifistic quietings of the desire to slay, to hurt, to
torment. Where the desire to hurt is gone pity ceases to be a
significant, a central emotion. It must of course continue to exist, but
it is displaced in the spiritual hierarchy; and all that moves
courageously, desirously, and vitally into the action of life takes on a
deeper and subtler intention. Lust, then, which on the lower plane was
something to be very frightened of, becomes a symbol of the highest
spirituality. It is right for Paul to be terrified of sex and so to hate
it, because he has so freshly escaped a bestial condition of life that
it threatens to plunge him back if he listens to one whisper But it is
also right for a Shakespeare to suck e