It is highly probable that this
sadness, which to us is modern, is to them eternal. It is highly
probable that what we have solemnly and suddenly discovered in
scientific text-books and philosophical magazines they absorbed
and experienced thousands of years ago, when they offered human
sacrifice in black and cruel forests and cried to their gods in
the dark. Their agnosticism is perhaps merely paganism; their
paganism, as in old times, is merely devilworship. Certainly,
Schopenhauer could hardly have written his hideous essay on women
except in a country which had once been full of slavery and the
service of fiends. It may be that these moderns are tricking us
altogether, and are hiding in their current scientific jargon
things that they knew before science or civilisation were. They
say that they are determinists; but the truth is, probably, that
they are still worshipping the Norns. They say that they
describe scenes which are sickening and dehumanising in the name
of art or in the name of truth; but it may be that they do it in
the name of some deity indescribable, whom they propitiated with
blood and terror before the beginning of history.
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