sections of contemporary society the importance of sexual acts has been minimized—unduly, even. At the same time, the dislike of cruelty seems to be steadily growing, and also (which is pregnant with the most important consequences) a certain tenderness of conscience with regard to the manifestations of avarice and the love of money is beginning to be noticeable. The mediaeval Catholic Church professed a passionate hatred for the love of money and used all the weapons in both its spiritual and temporal armouries to prevent men from indulging too freely in this sin.

Under Calvin and the later Protestants the Christian attitude towards money underwent a great change. The Old Testament notion, that prosperity was a sign of virtue (which indeed it is, if you limit virtue to prudence, industry, thrift, and the like), was revived. Today, under the influence of Socialists, Tolstoyans, William-Morrisites, and the various other modern protestants against industrialism, a certain reaction towards the mediaeval standards of economic morality has begun to set in. The time, it may be, is not so very far distant when the most hateful heresies, in the eyes of all right-thinking people, will be, not amorous, but economic heresies; when fifty years behind the bars will be the fate of the over-monied rather than of the over-sexed. Whether this state of things will be preferable to the existent state I cannot say; it will be different, that is all one can be certain of. It is fashionable nowadays to call every change a progress. I myself prefer the older, the less presumptuous and self-congratulatory name.

The end