d prejudice and fanatical hatred of me, you are wrong and I
am right: the world does move.'

"But you didn't say that, and you don't think it. If you did you would
be glad you went into the Queensberry trial, glad you were accused, glad
you were imprisoned and punished because all these things must bring
your vindication more quickly; you are sorry for them all, because in
your heart you know you were wrong. This old world in the main is right:
it's you who are wrong."

"Of course everything can be argued, Frank; but I hold to my conviction:
the best minds even now don't condemn us, and the world is becoming more
tolerant.[31] I didn't justify myself in court because I was told I
should be punished lightly if I respected the common prejudices, and
when I tried to speak afterwards the judge would not let me."

"And I believe," I retorted, "that you were hopelessly beaten and could
never have made a fight of it, because you felt the Time-spirit was
against you. How else was a silly, narrow judge able to wave you to
silence? Do you think he could have silenced me? Not all the judges in
Christendom. Let me give you an example. I believe with Voltaire that
when modesty goes out of life it goes into the language as prudery. I am
quite certain that our present habit of not discussing sexual questions
in our books is bound to disappear, and that free and dignified speech
will take the place of our present prurient mealy-mouthedness. I have
long thought it possible, probable even, in the present state of society
in England, where we are still more or less under the heel of the
illiterate and prudish Philistinism of our middle class, that I might be
had up to answer some charge of publishing an indecent book. The current
of the time appears to be against me. In the spacious days of Elizabeth,
in the modish time of the Georges, a freedom of speech was habitual
which to-day is tabooed. Our cases, therefore, are somewhat alike. Do
you think I should dread the issue or allow myself to be silenced by a
judge? I would set forth my defence before the judge and before the jury
with the assurance of victory in me! I should not minimise what I had
written; I should not try to explain it away; I should seek to make it
stronger. I should justify every word, and finally I'd warn both judge
and jury that if they condemned and punished me they would only make my
ultimate triumph more conspicuous. 'All the great men of the past are
with me,' I