“I recollect your father saying to me once that in many persons the infliction of pain on others--in extreme cases, even on themselves--gives rise to sensations of enjoyment which are actually akin to, and have their seat in the same region as, the sensations of physical lust. Thus the nuns who ill-use children in their orphanages, and the Puritans who gloat over the sufferings of profligate men and women, are really indulging in an unnatural form of profligacy. It is difficult to account on any other principle for what Anglo-Saxon races call their civilizing mission. It clearly has nothing to do with Christianity, because the only sins seriously denounced in the Gospel are love of money and hypocrisy, and those are the supreme Anglo-Saxon virtues. When we find a nation of swindlers bent on putting down polygamy in Utah, and a nation of pirates objecting to child-marriages in Hindustan, we are clearly face to face with some form of insanity. And it is becoming more difficult every day to escape out of the power of the maniacs. “Rousseau rendered greater services to the democracy of Europe and America than any one man who has ever lived. He is the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the author of universal suffrage. And yet if any follower of Rousseau attempted to set up a community to lead the life which Rousseau lived and advocated, anywhere within reach of that democracy, it would be put down by force. This isle is now the property of a hospital--of course, a hospital for the benefit of the democracy. I have written proposing to acquire the island and build on it a hospital for men of letters, and even that is more than democracy can tolerate; my letter has not been acknowledged. Switzerland is covered with sanatoriums for every kind of disease, but there is no sanatorium for genius. The Swiss are making millions a year out of Byron’s praises of their scenery; they grudge the smallest corner of their soil to be a home for other Byrons. “As far as I can see, there are only three or four countries which have still been spared a measure of freedom, and they will not retain it very long. The Puritans have been howling for the blood of the Turks for generations, and I doubt if their mutual jealousy will hold them back much longer from civilizing the whole of Islam. China has been spared for the moment, but it cannot be saved except on condition that it follows the Japanese example and becomes as greedy and bloodthirsty as the Christian Powers. “However, I shall now visit the countries that have not been annexed up to the present, and try to find some spot where it may be possible to set up a city of refuge. I will found a spiritual order like the old Knights of the Temple. Who knows that we may not be able to preserve one spot of the planet alike from the millionaire and the Socialist, the slave-driver and the slave?