nt maidenhood.
They cannot admire a rose for its fragrant beauty, but must needs
regard it as a thing to be picked at once and used to gratify their
appetite. Nay, they cannot even wait till it is a full-blown rose, but
must destroy the lovely bud. The "civilized" Hindoos, who are allowed
legally to sacrifice girls to their lusts before the poor victims have
reached the age of puberty, are really on a level with the African
savages who indulge in the same practice. An unsophisticated reader of
_Kalidasa_ might find in the King's comparison of Sakuntala to "a
flower that no one has smelt, a sprig that no one has plucked, a pearl
that has not yet been pierced," a recognition of the charm of maiden
purity. But there is a world-wide difference between this and the
modern sentiment. The King's attitude, as the context shows, is simply
that of an epicure who prefers his oysters fresh. The modern sentiment
is embodied in Heine's exquisite lines:

DU BIST WIE EINE BLUME.

E'en as a lovely flower
So fair, so pure, thou art;
I gaze on thee and sadness
Comes stealing o'er my heart.

My hands I fain had folded
Upon thy soft brown hair,
Praying that God may keep thee
So lovely, pure, and fair.
--_Trans, of Kate Freiligrath Kroeker_.

It is not surprising that this intensely modern poem should have been
set to music--the most modern of all the arts--more frequently than
any other verses ever written. To Orientals, to savages, to Greeks, it
would be incomprehensible--as incomprehensible as Ruskin's "there is
no true conqueror of lust but love," or Tennyson's

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

To them the love between men and women seems not a purifying,
ennobling emotion, a stimulus to self-improvement and an impulse to do
generous, unselfish deeds, but a mere animal passion, low and
degrading.

LOVE DESPISED IN JAPAN AND CHINA

The Japanese have a little more regard for women than most Orientals,
yet by them, too, love is regarded as a low passion--as, in fact,
identical with lust. It is not considered respectable for young folks
to arrange their own marriages on a basis of love.

"Among the lower classes, indeed," says Kuechler,[44] "such direct
unions are not infrequent; but they are held in contempt, and are
known as yago (meeting on a moor), a term of disrespect, showing the
low opinion ent