“The world had fallen into decay, and right principles had perished.  Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds had grown rife; ministers murdered their rulers and sons their fathers.  Confucius was frightened at what he saw, and undertook the work of reformation.”—­Mencius

Men were expecting an avatar in old Judaea; and, sure enough, one came.  But they were looking for a national leader, a Messiah, to throw off for them the Roman yoke; or else for an ascetic like their prophets of old time:  something, in any case, out of the way;—­a personality wearing marks of avatarship easily recognisable.  The one who came, however, so far from leading them against the Romans, seemed to have a good deal of sympathy with the Romans.  He consorted with centurions and tax-gatherers, and advised the Jews to render unto Roman Caesar the things which were his:  which meant, chiefly, the tribute.  And he was not an ascetic, noticeably; bore no resemblance to their prophets of old time; but came, as he said, ‘eating and drinking’; even went to marriage-feasts, and that by no means to play killjoy;—­ and they said, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a winebibber!’ (which was a lie).—­Instead of supporting the national religion, as anyone with half an eye to his interests would have done, he did surprising things in the temple with a whip of small cords.—­ “Here,” said they, “let us crucify this damned fellow!” And they did.

Aftertimes, however, recognised him as an avatar; and then so perverse is man!—­as the one and only possible avatar.  If ever another should appear, said our western world, it could but be this one come again; and, because the doctrine of avatars is a fundamental instinct in human nature, they expected that he would come again.  So when the pressure of the times and the intuition of men warned them that a great incarnation was due, they began to look for his coming.

That was in our own day, say in the last half-century; during which time a mort of books have been written about a mysterious figure turning up in some modern city, whom you could not fail to recognise by certain infallible signs.  Generally speaking, the chief of these were:  long hair, and a tendency to make lugubrious remarks beginning with Verily, verily I say unto you. In actual life, too, lots of men did grow their hair long and cultivate the verily-verily habit; hoping that, despite their innate modesty, their fellow-men might not fail to take the hint and pierce the disguise afforded, often by a personal morality you might call oblique.

But if an avatar had come, it is fairly certain that he or she would have followed modern fashions in hair and speech; first, because real avatars have a sense of humor; and secondly, because his or her business would have been to reform, not the language or style of hair-dressing, but life.—­’He or she’ is a very vile phrase; for the sake of novelty, let us make the feminine include the masculine,