or
grimacing, there ceases to be any harm in them. They say that they wish
to rescue from out of the mire where prudery has thrown it, that which
is clean in itself; they wish to show that the whole of Nature is holy;
they wish to purify by sanctifying."

Baldwin listened with a smile of contempt. "Of course such words seem
very fine," he said; "but a thing is either holy or is not holy: all
the incense of poetry and all the hocus-pocus words of mysticism cannot
alter its nature by a title. And woe betide us if we once think that
any such ceremony of sanctification can take place; woe betide us if
we disguise the foul as the innocent, or the merely indifferent as the
holy! There is in Nature a great deal which is foul: in that which men
are pleased to call unnatural, because Nature herself chastises it after
having produced it: there is in Nature an infinite amount of abominable
necessity and abominable possibility, which we have reason and
conscience to separate from that which within Nature itself is innocent
or holy. Mind, I say innocent _or_ holy; for innocence and holiness are
very different things. All our appetites, within due limits, are
innocent, but they are not therefore holy; and that is just what
mystico-sensual poetry fails to perceive, and in giving innocence the
rank of holiness it makes it sinful. Do you know what is the really
holy? It is that of which the world possesses too little, and can
never possess too much: it is justice, charity, heroism, self-command,
truthfulness, lovingness, beauty, genius--these things are holy. Place
them, if you will, on a poetic altar, that all men may see them, and
know them, and love them, and seek after them life-long without ever
wearying. But do not enshrine in poetic splendours the merely innocent;
that which bestows no merit on its possessor, that which we share with
every scoundrel and every animal, that which is so universal that it
must for ever be kept in check, and which, unless thus checked by that
in ourselves which is truly holy, will degrade us lower than beasts.
For in so doing--in thus attempting to glorify that in which there is
nothing glorious--you make men think that self-indulgence is sanctity,
you let them consume their lives in mere acquiescence with their lusts
and laziness, while all around is raging the great battle between
good and evil. Worst of all, in giving them this worship of a mystic
Ashtaroth or Belial, you hide from them the knowled