Storied windows richly dight
          Casting a dim religious light,

which even the Puritan Milton could thus celebrate.  Doubtless, that English Puritan persecution was the severest that Beauty has been called upon to endure.  She still suffers from it, need one say, to this day, particularly in New England, where if the sculptured images of goddess and nymph are not exactly broken to pieces by the populace, it is from no goodwill towards them, but rather from an ingrained reverence for any form of property, even though it be nude, and where, at all events, they are under the strict surveillance of a highly proper and respectable police, those distinguished guardians of American morals.

It is worth while to try and get at the reason for this wide-spread, deep-rooted, fear of beauty:  for some reason there must surely be.  Such instinctive feelings, on so broad a scale, are not accidental.  And so soon as one begins to analyse the attitude of religion towards beauty, the reason is not far to seek.

All religions are made up of a spiritual element and a moral element, the moral element being the temporary, practical, so to say, working side of religion, concerned with this present world, and the limitations and necessities of the various societies that compose it.  The spiritual element, the really important part of religion, has no concern with Time and Space, temporary mundane laws, or conduct.  It concerns itself only with the eternal properties of things.  Its business is the contemplation and worship of the mystery of life, “the mystery we make darker with a name.”

Now, great popular religions, designed as they are for the discipline and control of the great brute masses of humanity, are almost entirely occupied with morality, and what passes in them for spirituality is merely mythology, an element of picturesque supernaturalism calculated to enforce the morality with the multitude.  Christianity is such a religion.  It is mostly a matter of conduct here and now upon the earth.  Its mystic side does not properly belong to it, and is foreign to, not to speak of its being practically ignored by, the average “Christian.”  It is a religion designed to work hand in hand with a given state of society, making for the preservation of such laws and manners and customs as are best fitted to make that society a success here and now, a worldly success in the best sense of the term.  Mohammedanism is a similar religion calculated for the needs of a different society.  Whatever the words or intentions of the founders of such religions, their kingdoms are essentially of this world.  They are not mystic, or spiritual, or in anyway concerned with infinite and eternal things.  Their business is the moral policing of humanity.  Morality, as of course its name implies, is a mere matter of custom, and therefore varies with the variations of races and climates.  It has nothing to do with spirituality, and, in fact, the best morals are often the least spiritual, and vice versa.  It will be understood then that any force which is apt to disturb this moral, or more exactly speaking social, order will meet at once with the opposition of organized “religions” so called, and the more spiritual it is, the greater will be the opposition, for it will thus be the more dangerous.