nineteenth century, in which we subtly live and subtly suffer. Always
throughout the circling ages the soul of man has to some slight extent
aspired after folly, as Nature aspires after Art, and as the old and
learned aspire after the wonderful ignorance that lies hidden between
the scarlet covers of the passionate book of youth. Always there have
been in the world earnest men and earnest women striving with a sacred
wisdom to compass the highest forms of folly, seeking with a manifold
persistence to sound the depths of that violet main in which the souls
of the elect rock to and fro eternally. But although, even in the
morning of the world, there were earnest seekers after lies, the pursuit
of ignorance has never been carried on with such unswerving fidelity and
with so much lovely unreason as is the case to-day. We are beginning,
only beginning, to understand some of the canons of the beautiful art of
folly."

Here Esme changed his ebony stick into his other hand, and glanced round
at Lord Reggie, with a delicate smile of self-approbation. Then he
proceeded, without clearing his throat.

"The mind of man has, however, always clung with a poetic persistence to
certain fallacies which have greatly interfered with the proper progress
of folly, and have terribly hindered the evolution of disorder out of
order, and of unreason out of reason. To give only a few instances. For
centuries upon centuries we have been told by those unenlightened beings
called philosophers, sages, and thinkers, that children should obey
their parents, that the old should direct the young, that Nature is the
mother of beauty, and that wisdom is the parent of true greatness. For
centuries upon centuries we have had instilled into us the malign
conception that in renunciation we shall find peace, and in starvation
the most satisfying plenty. Men and women have lived to be dumb, instead
of living to speak; have stopped their ears to the alluring cries of
folly; have gone to the grave with all their sublime absurdities still
in them, unuttered, unexpressed, unimpressed upon the wildly sensible
people by whom they have been surrounded and environed. The art of folly
has been trampled in the dust by the majority; while poor reasonable
human beings have been offering up sacrifices to propriety,
respectability, common sense, and a thousand grotesque idols, whose very
names fall as unmelodiously upon the ear as the shrill and monotonous
discords of the n