Come to me, ye who are weak.  The Word went forth, the terrible disastrous Word, and before it fell the ancient gods, and the vices that they represent, and which I revere, are outcast now in the world of men; the Word went forth, and the world interpreted the Word, blindly, ignorantly, savagely, for two thousand years, but nevertheless nearing every day the end—­the end that Thou in Thy divine intelligence foresaw, that finds its voice to-day (enormous though the antithesis may be, I will say it) in the Pall Mall Gazette.  What fate has been like Thine?  Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious plight, forthward in the world’s van the glory and symbol of a man’s new idea—­Pity.  Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame with Thy light than ever before—­Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth century.  The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in the ruin Thou hast created.

Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice.  Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice.  Man would not be man but for injustice.  Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice!  What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under Pharaoh’s lash or Egypt’s sun?  It was well that they died that I might have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment.  Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the ignominious slaves that died?  What care I that the virtue of some sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres’ La Source?  That the model died of drink and disease in the hospital, is nothing when compared with the essential that I should have La Source, that exquisite dream of innocence, to think of till my soul is sick with delight of the painter’s holy vision.  Nay more, the knowledge that a wrong was done—­that millions of Israelites died in torments, that a girl, or a thousand girls, died in the hospital for that one virginal thing, is an added pleasure which I could not afford to spare.  Oh, for the silence of marble courts, for the shadow of great pillars, for gold, for reticulated canopies of lilies; to see the great gladiators pass, to hear them cry the famous “Ave Caesar,” to hold the thumb down, to see the blood flow, to fill the languid hours with the agonies of poisoned slaves!