thing Oriental and feminine in Christianity which is revealed in the thought "Whom the Lord loveth Hechasteneth"; for the women in the East look uponchastisements and their strict seclusion from the world as tokens of their husband's love, and complain when these tokens cease.
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‘’Evil thoughts make evil minds.’’—The passions become evil and vicious when viewed with evil and vicious eyes. Thus Christianity has succeeded in changing Eros and Aphrodite-noble and idealistic powers—into goblins and phantoms, by means of the pangs which every sexual impulse was made to cause in the consciences of the believers. Is it not terrible that we wish to make necessary and periodical feelings a source of inward misery, and, in so doing, endeavour to make this inward misery in every human beingsomething necessary and periodical?This misery, moreover, is kept secret and consequently is more deeply rooted: for not all have the courage of Shakespeare, to admit their Christian gloom regarding this subject as clearly as he has done in his :”Sonnets."Is it then absolutely necessary that something which we have to combat and to keep in bounds or, according to circumstances, altogether to banished from our minds, should always be called evil? Is it not in the nature of vulgar souls always to call an enemy evil? And should
