u impoverish life, you weaken the mainspring of art, and
narrow the realm of beauty."

"All societies," I replied, "and most individuals, too, punish what they
dislike, right or wrong. There are bad smells which do not injure
anyone; yet the manufacturers of them would be indicted for committing a
nuisance. Nor does your plea that by limiting the choice of passion you
impoverish life, appeal to me. On the contrary, I think I could prove
that passion, the desire of the man for the woman and the woman for the
man, has been enormously strengthened in modern times. Christianity has
created, or at least cultivated, modesty, and modesty has sharpened
desire. Christianity has helped to lift woman to an equality with man,
and this modern intellectual development has again intensified passion
out of all knowledge. The woman who is not a slave but an equal, who
gives herself according to her own feeling, is infinitely more desirable
to a man than any submissive serf who is always waiting on his will. And
this movement intensifying passion is every day gaining force.

"We have a far higher love in us than the Greeks, infinitely higher and
more intense than the Romans knew; our sensuality is like a river
banked in with stone parapets, the current flows higher and more
vehemently in the narrower bed."

"You may talk as you please, Frank, but you will never get me to believe
that what I know is good to me, is evil. Suppose I like a food that is
poison to other people, and yet quickens me; how dare they punish me for
eating of it?"

"They would say," I replied, "that they only punish you for inducing
others to eat it."

He broke in: "It is all ignorant prejudice, Frank; the world is slowly
growing more tolerant and one day men will be ashamed of their barbarous
treatment of me, as they are now ashamed of the torturings of the Middle
Ages. The current of opinion is making in our favour and not against
us."

"You don't believe what you say," I cried; "if you really thought
humanity was going your way, you would have been delighted to play
Galileo. Instead of writing a book in prison condemning your companion
who pushed you to discovery and disgrace, you would have written a book
vindicating your actions. 'I am a martyr,' you would have cried, 'and
not a criminal, and everyone who holds the contrary is wrong.'

"You would have said to the jury:

"'In spite of your beliefs, and your cherished dogmas; in spite of your
religion an