ld in the highest honour. Prizes are offered for beauty, and statues
are erected to the winners. Many are called after some particular trait;
for example, "Timare of the lovely toes," and a pretty eyelash is a
title to public fame. Beauty they say is twice blessed, since it pleases
the possessor as well as others.

The sense of existence, apart from what they do or gain, is their chief
happiness. Their "ealo," or the height of felicity, is a passive rather
than an active state. It is (if I am not mistaken) a kind of serene
rapture or tranquil ecstasy of the soul, which is born doubtless from a
perfect harmony between the person and his environment. In it, they say,
the illusion of the world is complete, and life is another name for
music and love.

As far as I could learn, this condition, though independent of sexual
love, is enhanced by it. On the one hand it is spoiled by too much
thought, and on the other by too much passion. They cherish it as they
cherish all the natural illusions (which are sacred in their eyes), but
being a state of repose it is transient, and only to be enjoyed from
time to time.

Since an unfit employment is a mistake, and a source of unhappiness,
everyone is free to choose the work that suits his nature. Parents and
teachers only help him to discover himself. One is called to his work by
a love for it, and the pleasure he takes in doing it easily and well. If
his bent is vague or tardy, he is allowed to change, and feel his way to
it by trial. Since the work or vocation is not a means of living, there
is no compulsion in it. Their aim is to do right in carrying out the
true intentions of Nature.

For the same reason everyone is free to choose the partner of his life.
They are monogamists, and believe that nothing can justify marriage but
love on both sides. The rite is very simple, and consists in the elected
pair sipping from the same dish of sacred water. It is called "drinking
of the cup."

Most of them die gradually of old age, and they do not seem to share our
fear and horror of death, but to regard it with a sad and pleasing
melancholy. The body is reduced to ashes on a pyre of fragrant wood, and
the songs they sing around it only breathe a tender regret for their
loss, mingled with a joyful hope of meeting again. They neither preserve
the dust as a memento, nor wear any kind of mourning; but they cherish
the memory of the absent in their hearts.

They believe that labour like vir