XXXI
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Many things, moreover, akin to highest deity or holding power near it, are still obscure. Or, perhaps, one may be still more surprised to find that they at once fill and elude our sight. Either their subtlety is too great for human vision to grasp, or such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holier sanctuary, and rules its kingdom, which is itself, without permitting access to any power except the spirit. What that is, without which nothing is, we cannot know: and when God, the greatest part of the universe, is an unknown God, we are surprised, are we, that there are some specks of fire we do not fully understand? How many animals we have come to know for the first time in our own days! Many, too, that are unknown to us, the people of a coming day will know. Many discoveries are reserved for the ages still to be, when our memory shall have perished. The world is a poor affair if it do not contain matter for investigation for the whole world in every age. Some of the sacred rites are not revealed to worshippers all at once. Eleusis retains some of its mysteries to show to votaries on their second visit. Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts. Those secrets of hers are not opened to all indiscriminately. They are withdrawn and shut up in the inner shrine. Of one of them this age will catch a glimpse, of another, the age that will come after.
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When, then, it may be asked, will all these things come to our full knowledge? Great schemes mature slowly, especially if effort is relaxed. There is one object we are bent on, heart and soul,—to be as wicked as possible—and we have not yet attained perfection. Vice is still making progress. Luxury is constantly discovering some new outlet for its madness, indecency some new form of insult on itself. Dissolute effeminacy and corruption are constantly discovering some more refined and delicate means of self-destruction. We have not yet wholly cast off our vigour. We are still doing our best to extinguish any spark of virtue that is left. By the smoothness and polish of our bodies we men have outdone the refinements of women; we have adopted the colours of harlots, that even an honest woman would not put on. With delicate mincing step we check our gait; we do not walk, with measured pace we go. We adorn our fingers with rings. A precious stone sparkles on every joint. Day by day we devise means of wronging and degrading our manhood, vexed that we cannot strip it off. One becomes a eunuch, another assumes the scandalous part of a gladiator, and, hired for death, arms for disgrace. The very pauper selects a victim on whom to sate his morbid lust.