Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



no 'man might enter without his lover — and which 

 was said to have remained unvanquished till 

 it was annihilated at the battle of Chseronaea — 

 proves to us hov/ publicly this passion and its place 

 in society were recognised ; while its universality 

 and the depth to which it had stirred the Greek 

 mind are indicated by the fact that whole treatises 

 on love, in its spiritual aspect, exist, in which no 

 other form of the sentiment seems to be contem- 

 plated ; and by the magnificent panorama of 

 Greek statuary, which was obviously to a large 

 extent inspired by it. In fact the most remarkable 

 Society known to history, and its greatest men, 

 cannot be properly considered or understood 

 apart from this passion ; yet the modern world 

 scarcely recognises it, or if it recognises, does so 

 chiefly to condemn it. ^ 



Other instances might be quoted to show how 

 differently moral questions are regarded in one 

 age and another — as in the cases of Usury, Magic, 

 Suicide, Infanticide, etc. On the v/holc we pride 

 ourselves (and justly I believe) on the general 

 advance in humanity ; yet we know that to-day 

 the merest savages can only shudder at a civilisa- 

 tion whose public opinion allows — as among us 

 — the rich to wallow in their wealth, while the 



* Modern writers fixing their regard on the physical side of 

 this love (necessary no doubt here, as elsewhere, to define and 

 corroborate the spiritual) have entered their protest as against 

 the mere obscenity into which the thing fell — for instance in the 

 days of Martial — but have missed the profound significance of 

 the heroic attachment itself. It is, however, with the ideals 

 that we are just now concerned and not with their disintegration. 



150 



