TEMPERANCE AND GLUTTONY 43 



Let us then forgive Shadow-tail his daintiness — not only 

 for the dainty legend, but also because he (in common with 

 all other beasts that perish) stands so far ahead of us in Tem- 

 perance when we come to consider the next and strongest 

 desire of all organic life — that is, the sexual passion. 



How man's eyes have so long been blinded to the Truth 

 in this matter is incomprehensible, unless we treat this 

 blindness as an inevitable sequence to Man's self-deception 

 in all matters pertaining to the Law of Increase : a self- 

 deception arising from a sense of having broken loose from 

 that Law, a self-deception which has brought about in man 

 an almost inconceivable inversion of attitude towards that 

 Law. 



Surely it needs but a glance at the wilderness for an 

 unbiased mind to realise that the old writer quoted a few 

 pages back was wise, indeed, when he added to the absence 

 of anger in the gentle beasts, the absence of lust. 



Let us look out this Valentine's Day — the day sacred to 

 lovers — and see what we can see. In the hedgerow yonder 

 a primrose star — the first to shine — has attracted a bee. The 

 winter of waiting is over. The great sacrament of Life 

 through sacrifice of Life is beginning once more. Down in 

 the meadow something white, almost shining in its white- 

 ness, lies like the primrose star amid the fast-coming flush of 

 green below the winter-yellowed grass. It is a new-dropped 

 lamb. Its mother grazes round it in widening circles, the 

 other ewes look towards it kindly and placidly. The time 

 has come for which they have waited since early autumn, 

 undisturbed by other desire than that of life for themselves 

 and for the coming Spring. 



Overhead the birds are singing, pulsing, trilling, fluttering 



