His Views and Principles
over ourselves and our destiny? Is the Life of Man, that great Drama which is being performed before the dread audience of High Heaven, matter for quip and retort, for senseless and thoughtless merriment? We know that the architects of the Dark Ages thought so; bewildered with superstition, they defiled even their own idolatrous holy places, and sculptured grotesque infamies by the very horns of the altar; while the wretched monks mingled obscene jokes with the would-be sacred mummeries that they called Mystery Plays. All this need not surprise us, for the world was then drunk with the wine of the fornications of Rome; but that so-called men-of-letters, men of education and presumably sharers in the enlightenment which since those dark old days has blessed the earth should deliberately put forward such a theory in modern times is more than surprising; it would be unthinkable if it were not, unhappily, true. Life is real, life is earnest, said the poet; life is a futile but amusing jest say the apologists for these dreadful
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