“We have a far higher love in us than the Greeks, infinitely higher and more intense than the Romans knew; our sensuality is like a river banked in with stone parapets, the current flows higher and more vehemently in the narrower bed.”

“You may talk as you please, Frank, but you will never get me to believe that what I know is good to me, is evil.  Suppose I like a food that is poison to other people, and yet quickens me; how dare they punish me for eating of it?”

“They would say,” I replied, “that they only punish you for inducing others to eat it.”

He broke in:  “It is all ignorant prejudice, Frank; the world is slowly growing more tolerant and one day men will be ashamed of their barbarous treatment of me, as they are now ashamed of the torturings of the Middle Ages.  The current of opinion is making in our favour and not against us.”

“You don’t believe what you say,” I cried; “if you really thought humanity was going your way, you would have been delighted to play Galileo.  Instead of writing a book in prison condemning your companion who pushed you to discovery and disgrace, you would have written a book vindicating your actions.  ‘I am a martyr,’ you would have cried, ’and not a criminal, and everyone who holds the contrary is wrong.’

“You would have said to the jury: 

“’In spite of your beliefs, and your cherished dogmas; in spite of your religion and prejudice and fanatical hatred of me, you are wrong and I am right:  the world does move.’

“But you didn’t say that, and you don’t think it.  If you did you would be glad you went into the Queensberry trial, glad you were accused, glad you were imprisoned and punished because all these things must bring your vindication more quickly; you are sorry for them all, because in your heart you know you were wrong.  This old world in the main is right:  it’s you who are wrong.”

“Of course everything can be argued, Frank; but I hold to my conviction:  the best minds even now don’t condemn us, and the world is becoming more tolerant.[31] I didn’t justify myself in court because I was told I should be punished lightly if I respected the common prejudices, and when I tried to speak afterwards the judge would not let me.”

“And I believe,” I retorted, “that you were hopelessly beaten and could never have made a fight of it, because you felt the Time-spirit was against you.  How else was a silly, narrow judge able to wave you to silence?  Do you think he could have silenced me?  Not all the judges in Christendom.  Let me give you an example.  I believe with Voltaire that when modesty goes out of life it goes into the language as prudery.  I am quite certain that our present habit of not discussing sexual questions in our books is bound to disappear, and that free and dignified speech will take the place of our present prurient mealy-mouthedness.  I have long thought it possible, probable even, in the present