ecessary
thus to torment ? Might not omnipotence have devised some scheme less cruel than that which must needs send up one universal wail from the beginning to the end of time, wailing births followed by wailing deaths, as though spirit and flesh had been united only to be torn asunder, as though sentient beings had been created only for the amusement of fate ? What is this one lesson nature teaches us ? Short, swift, and damna- ble. Throughout the ages the strong shall eat up the weak, and death shall swallow all. Foolish are we, to propagate our kind that they may be made the sport of the present, with the certainty of a final ghastly issue.
Now the heathen for their gods do not have that love and respect. Love, or what was called love in Homeric heroes, in the minds of Augustan critics, and in mediaeval religious devotees was but a weakness. Among warriors, the tender sentiment implied effiemi- nacy, and too often piety pleaded the will of heaven as an excuse for treachery to woman. And what did the gods themselves know about love? Their love was all sensuality. Jupiter put Cupid in the stocks because the mischievous imp would not make the women love him for himself alone, but must first turn him into bull, satyr, swan, or other form before his presence should inspire the tender passion. They would call it hate, not love, that prompted the idea of eternal burnino-.
There are in every city other fifty wives besides the fifty daughters of Danaus, king of Argos, who kill their husbands, if not in a single night, then in a time made yet more cruel by its prolonged length.
Intolerant of restraint as the wild votaries of Bel- lona, or of Anubis, of Osiris, or of Cybele, like the Romans of Juvenal's day, one common quality of reckless disregard of consequences pervaded the whim of the hour. Amorous widow-hunters of the Colonel Chartres or duke of Roussillon type, preeminent in their superfluity of naughtiness, met with fair success.
