adow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really
in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from
matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery
also.

He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a
science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it
was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to
their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of
warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation
of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow
and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in
experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself.
All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as
our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would
do many times, and with joy.

It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by
which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and
certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to
promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane
was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt
that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new
experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.
What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been
transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something
that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from sense, and was for
that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose
origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannised most strongly over us. Our
weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often
happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were
really experimenting on ourselves.

While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door,
and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner.
He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into
scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed
like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He
thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life, and wondered ho