ane, peaceful, quiet, friendly and gay. He does not free
us from a dark responsibility to God to plunge us under the yoke of
a darker responsibility to posterity. He would free us from every
kind of responsibility. He would reduce our life to a beautiful
unrestricted "Abbey of Thelema," over the gates of which the great
Pantagruelian motto "Fay ce que vouldray" would be written in
letters of gold.

What one is brought to feel in reading Remy de Gourmont is that the
liberty of the individual to follow his intellectual and psychological
tastes unimpeded by any sort of external authority is much more
important for civilisation at large and much more conducive to the
interests of posterity than any inflexible rules, whether they be laid
upon us by ecclesiastical tradition, by puritanical heretics or by
prophetic supermen.

It is really _liberty_--first and last--in the full beautiful meaning of
that great human word, that Remy de Gourmont claims for us;
though he is perfectly aware that such liberty can never be enjoyed
except by those whose genuine intellectual emancipation renders
them fit to enjoy it. It is always for the liberty of _man_ as an
individual, never for _men_ as a herd, that he contends; as his
favourite phrase, "subjective idealism," constantly insists.

And, above all, it is perfect and untrammelled liberty for the artist
that he demands. One of his most suggestive and interesting essays
is upon the topic of the influence of the "young girl" upon
contemporary literature.

This is indeed carrying the war into the enemy's camp; for if the
"young girl" has interfered with the freedom of the artist in France,
what has she done in England and America? "What are they doing
here?" cried Goethe once, teased and fretted by the presence of this
restricting influence. "Why don't they keep them in their convents?"

And it is this very cry, the cry of the impatient artist longing to deal
freely and largely with every mortal aspect of human life, that Remy
de Gourmont echoes.

It is indeed a serious and difficult problem; and it is one of the
problems thrust inevitably upon us by the spread of education and
the consequent cheapening and vulgarising of education under the
influence of democracy.

But it can have only one answer, the great and memorable answer
given to all scrupulous protectors of virtue by John Milton in his
"Areopagitica." It is better that this or the other person should come
to harm by the b