"The English, on the other hand, want to wield such an empire as the Roman, and yet build up their polity upon the narrow plane of a Spartan ἁγωγἡ. In this there is an inherent contradiction. They hamper their best intentions, and must at all times, and against their better convictions, legislate for faddists, because they lack the courage of their Imperial mission. "Empires want Imperial institutions, that is, such as are richly endowed in point of political power. Offices ought to be given by appointment, and not by competitive examinations, if only for five or ten years. The police ought to have a very much more comprehensive power, and the schools ought to be subject to a national committee. Parliament must be Imperial, and not only British. Very much more might be said about the necessity of rendering this Realm more _apotelestic_, as we have called it, but I see that Euripides is burning to make his remarks, and I am sure that he is able to give us the final expression of the whole difficulty in a manner that none of us can rival." * * * * * Thereupon Euripides addressed the company as follows: "For many, many a year I have observed and studied the most life-endowed commonwealth that the world has ever seen, Athens. I watched the Athenians in their homes, in the market-place, in the law courts, in peace and war, in the theatre and in the temple, at the holy places of Eleusis and Delphi, their men as well as their women. "Personally I long inclined towards a view of the world almost exclusively influenced by Apollo. I thought that as the sun is evidently the great life-giver of all existence, so light, reason, system, liberty, and consummately devised measures constitute the highest wisdom of the community. "In all I wrote or said I worked for the great god of Light, and Reason, and Progress. I could not find words and phrases trenchant enough to express my disdain for sentiments and ideas discountenanced by Apollo. I persecuted and fiercely attacked all those dark, chthonic, and mysterious passions of which man is replete to overflowing. I hated Imperialism, I adored Liberty; I extolled Philosophy, and execrated Orphic ideas. "But at last, when I had gone through the fearful experiences of the Peloponnesian War, with all its supreme glories and its unrelieved shames, I learned to think otherwise. I learned to see that as man has two souls in his breast, one celestial or Apollinic, the other terrestrial or Dionysiac, so there are two gods, and not one, that govern this sub-lunar world. "The two are Apollo and Dionysus. "One rules the world of light, of political power, of scientific reason, and of harmonious muses. The other is the god of unreason, of passion, and wild enthusiasm, of that unwieldy Heart of ours which is fuller of monsters, and also of precious pearls, than is the wide ocean.