uff of the great disease to a dramatic head.
The thing can no longer diffuse itself like an attenuated evil humour
through every vein of the world-body.

Customary piety, conventional religion, the thin security of
self-satisfied morality, can now no more tease us with their sleek
impertinence. In the presence of a venture of this high distinction, of
a faith of this tragic intensity, such shabby counterfeits of the race's
hope dwindle and pale and fade.

We now perceive what the alternative is, what the voice of "deep
calling unto deep" really utters, as the constellation of Hercules
draws the solar world toward it through the abysmal night. No more
ethical foolery; no more pragmatic insolence; no more mystical
rhetoric.

The prophets of optimism "lie in hell like sheep." The world yawns
and quivers to its foundations. Jotunheim rushes upon Asgard. From
the pleasant fields of sun-lit pagan doubt comes to our ears the
piping of the undying Pan--older than all the "twilights" of all the
"gods."

But for the rest the issue is now plain, the great dilemma clear. No
more fooling with shadows when faith has lost its substance;
no more walking on the road to Emmaus when the Master is
transformed to a stream of tendency; no more liberal theology when
Socrates is as divine as Jesus.

The "Thinking Reed" bows before the wind of the infinite spaces. It
bows. It bends. It is broken.

Aut Christus aut Nihil!

VOLTAIRE

The immense bulk of Voltaire's writings is profoundly uninteresting
to me. I once saw--I think it must have been in Liverpool--a
wonderful edition of his complete works published during the
Revolution and with a duplicate copy of every illustrative print. I
couldn't afford the price of the thing just then, amazingly low though
it was, but in my devotion to that great name, I swore that, when I
made my library, that noble edition should be in it.

I have never made any library and never intend to. The sight of
classical authors in row upon row depresses me beyond words.
Public Libraries are still worse. I have no wish to be helped "to get
on in the world" by Mr. Carnegie. I resent the association between
literature and "public benefactions." Does he propose to dole out the
exquisite taste necessary to appreciate these rare things, on condition
that our "home town" pay half the cost? Thank Heaven, a feeling for
what is noble and distinguished in human thought is beyond the
reach of any philanthropist.