that, in this whole range of inward experiences, we people of our days are mere novices, trying to solve dark riddles; four thousand years ago these infamous refinements of self-enjoyment were much better known than they now arc. Take the creation of the world: perhaps some Indian dreamer may have looked on it as an ascetic operation which a god attempted with himself. Perhaps the god wanted to chain himself to a versatile nature as an instrument of torture, and, thereby, to feel his bliss and power doubled! And suppose it had been a God of Love even: what a delight for Him to create a suffering people, in order Himself to suffer most divinely and superhumanly at the sight of the mallayed torments, and, in so doing, to tyrannise Himself. And suppose He was not only a God of Love, but also a God of Holiness and Sinlessness : what ecstasies of the Divine ascetic, while creating sin and sinners and eternal doom, and below His heaven and throne a vast abode of eternal torment and eternal groans and sighs, may we picture to ourselves! It is not altogether impossible that the souls also of Paul, Dante, Calvin, and the like of them, nay for once have dived into the horrible secrets of such delight in power and in the face of such souls we may ask, Did the periodical striving after distinction really reach its final stage and its last representative in the ascetic? Could not this circle, from the very outset, be followed up once more, having for its fixed centre the fundamental moods
