herefore
desirable--a confusion between what has been, and could not help being,
and what may be and ought to be. It is the attempt to solve a moral
problem by an historical test."

"I don't understand in the least, Baldwin."

"Why, thus: our modern familiarity with the intellectual work of all
times and races has made people perceive that in past days indecency was
always part and parcel of literature, and that to try to weed it out
is to completely alter the character of at least a good half of the
literature of the past. Hence, some of us moderns, shaken as we are in
all our conventional ideas, have argued that this so-called indecency
is a legitimate portion of all literature, and that the sooner it is
re-introduced into that of the present the better, if our literature is
to be really vital and honest. Now, these people do not perceive that
the literature of the past contained indecencies, merely because,
being infinitely less self-conscious, less responsible than now, the
literature of those days contained fragments of every portion of the
civilization which produced it. For besides what I might call absolute
indecency, in the sense of pruriency, the literature of the past is full
of filth pure and simple, like some Eastern town; a sure proof this,
that if certain subjects which we taboo were not tabooed then, it was
not from any conscious notion of their legitimacy, but from a general
habit of making literature, like the street of some Oriental or mediaeval
town, the scene of every sort of human action, important or trifling,
noble or vile; regarding it as the place for which the finest works were
painted or carved, and into which all the slops were emptied. Hence, in
our wanderings through the literature of the past, our feet are for
ever stumbling into pools of filth, while our eyes are seeking for the
splendid traceries, the gorgeous colours above; our stomachs are turned
by stenches even while we are peeping in at some wonderful rose garden
or fruit orchard. I think you might almost count on your fingers the
books up to the year 1650, in which you are sure of encountering no
beastliness--choice gardens or bowers of the soul, or sacred chapels
kept carefully tidy and pure--viz., Milton, Spenser, the _Vita Nuova_,
Petrarch, Tasso--things, you see, mainly sacred or spiritualistic--sort
of churches where only devotion of some sort goes on; but if we go out
to where there is real life, life complete and thoughtle