victims, because their ignorance prevents them from distinguishing between moderation and excess, and from being betimes cautious against themselves. Hence innocent, that is ignorant, young wives grow familiar with the frequent enjoyment of veneries, and miss them very much in after yours when their husbands will have fallen ill or grown prematurely old. That harmless and devout conception, as though this frequent intercourse with them be right and proper, fills them with a craving which afterwards exposes them to the severest trials, and even worse things than these. But, taken quite generally and critically, whoever loves a person or a thing without knowing him or it, falls a prey to something which he would not love if he could see it. Wherever experience, caution, and measured steps are required, it is the innocent who will be most thoroughly corrupted, for he has to drink with blindfolded eyes the dregs and the nethermost poison of everything. Let us review the practice of all princes, churches, sects, parties, corporations: is not the innocent always used as the sweetest bait for the most dangerous and infamous cases? Just as Ulysses used innocent Neoptolemos for the purpose of tricking the old, infirm anchorite and wizard of Lemnos out of his bow and arrows, Christianity, with its contempt of the world, has made it virtue of ignorance—the Christian innocence; perhaps, because the most frequent result of this innocence is, as above stated, guilt, the sense of
