es nothing about
chastity, and to see with amused indulgence the worship of the great
goddess Lubricity, let us stand fast and say that her worship is against
nature--human nature--and that it is ruin. For this is the test of its
being against human nature, that for human societies it is ruin. And the
test is one from which there is no escape, as from the old tests in such
matters there may be. For, if you allege that it is the will of God that
we should be pure, the sceptical Gallo-Latins will tell you that they do
not know any such person. And in like manner, if it is said that those
who serve the goddess Aselgeia shall not inherit the Kingdom of God, the
Gallo-Latin may tell you that he does not believe in any such place. But
that the sure tendency and upshot of things establishes that the service
of the goddess Aselgeia is ruin, that her followers are marred and
stunted by it, and disqualified for the ideal society of the future, is
an infallible test to employ.

"The saints admonish us to let our thoughts run upon whatsoever things
are pure, if we would inherit the Kingdom of God; and the divine Plato
tells us that we have within us a many-headed beast and a man, and that
by dissoluteness we feed or strengthen the beast in us, and starve the
man; and finally, following the divine Plato among the sages at a humble
distance, comes the prosaic and unfashionable Paley, and says in his
precise way: that 'this vice has a tendency, which other species of vice
have not so directly, to unsettle and weaken the powers of the
understanding; as well as, I think, in a greater degree than other
vices, to render the heart thoroughly corrupt.' True; and, once admitted
and fostered, it eats like a canker, and with difficulty can ever be
brought to let go its hold again, but for ever tightens it. Hardness and
insolence come in its train; an insolence which grows till it ends by
exasperating and alienating everybody; a hardness which grows until the
man can at last scarcely take pleasure in anything, outside the service
of his goddess, except cupidity and greed, and cannot be touched with
emotion by any language except Fustian. Such are the fruits of the
worship of the great goddess Aselgeia.

"So, instead of saying that Nature cares nothing about chastity, let us
say that human nature, _our_ nature, cares about it a great deal.... The
Eternal has attached to certain moral causes the safety or the ruin of
States, and the present popu