impulses by self-imposed mortification, and with the help of prayer and belief in God's promised millennium managed to keep their heads above water despite the crushing spectacle of the life of those times. Long before the Christian era, the Greeks of noble disposition felt the need of living in an atmosphere of higher intellectuality and morality than that of the market-place, and they hid themselves behind the cloud-curtain of the Eleusinian Mysteries, where they kept to themselves, escaped the rule of the rude Law, and followed the nobler precepts of Morality. Whenever the measure of Morality contained in positive law did not suffice for the minority with higher aspirations, this minority adopted the same expedient, a form of esotericism; small circles were formed outside the community in which there was added to the current legal code a superstructure of stricter rules, more finely shaded duties, more courteous consideration. Present-day life also offers examples of this tendency which is met with in all ages. There are select circles and professions in which the standard of irreproachableness is far higher than among the mass of the people. There a man is not held blameless, simply because he has never transgressed a positive law, never come into conflict with the powers of justice. He must be as unspotted in the eye of moral justice as he is in that of the Law. A club or association that is self-respecting will not admit to membership a candidate reputed to lie, to have an evil tongue, to break his word, to be a toady and a snob, though none of these offences are punishable by law. It has happened that a corps of German officers has forced one of their number to send in his papers because he has seduced and deserted a respectable girl, an adventure flattering to the vanity of puppies who, as like as not, boast of it, and with which a judge can only deal if the injured girl appeals to him--and even then he cannot punish the offender, but merely sentence him to pay damages.