Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent materialistic in the crude sense of Omar’s poetry.  The danger is subtler.  The motto, “Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die,” is capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it becomes poisonous indeed.  For there are various ways of eating and drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetites may become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feast of reason and the flow of soul.  It is possible in that way also to take the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons.  Mr. Peyton has said, “You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a picture there.  The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons.”  That is the root of the matter after all—­the soul and horizons.  He who says, “To-day shall suffice for me,” whether it be in the high intellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the grip of the world that passeth away; and that is a danger which Omar’s advent has certainly not lessened.

The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism is only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple life.  Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have a natural tendency to vice.  But vice is not a thing which any man loves for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of degradation.  It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times.  There are moods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feel the splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strange scents of the world.  To surrender to these has always been, and always will be, deadly.  It is the old temptation to cease to strive, which we have already found to be the keynote of Goethe’s Faust.  Kingsley, in one of the most remarkable passages of Westward Ho! describes two of Amyas Leigh’s companions, settled down in a luscious paradise of earthly delights, while their comrades endured the never-ending hardships of the march.  By the sight of that soft luxury Amyas was tempted of the devil.  But as he gazed, a black jaguar sprang from the cliff above, and fastened on the fair form of the bride of one of the recreants.  “O Lord Jesus,” said Amyas to himself, “Thou hast answered the devil for me!”