"I may therefore say that I have at last come to a state of purification and castigation which allows one to see things in their right proportion. Thus, with regard to this curious country in which we are just at present, I cannot but think that while there is much truth in what all of you have remarked, yet you do not seem to grasp quite clearly the essence, or, as we used to say, the οὑσἱα of the whole problem. "This nation, like all of us Hellenes, has many centuries ago made up its mind to keep its political liberty intact and undiminished. For that purpose it always tried to limit, and in the last three hundred years actually succeeded in limiting, or even destroying, most of the coercive powers of the State, the Church, the nobility, the army. Selden not improperly compared them to the Jews. And as in the case of the Jews, so in the case of the English, the lack of the coercive powers of State, Church, nobility, and army inevitably engendered coercive powers of an individual or private character. "This is called, in a general word, Puritanism. Our Spartans, who would not tolerate public coercive corporate powers any more than do the English, were likewise driven into an individual Puritanism, called their ἁγωγἡ, which likewise consisted of fanatic teetotalism, _mutisme_, anti-intellectualism, and other common features. "This inevitable Puritanism in England assumed formerly what they call a Biblical form; now it feeds on teetotalism--that is, it has become liquid Puritanism. I have it on the most unquestionable authority, that the contemporary Britons are, in point of consumption of spirits and wine, the most moderate consumers of all the European nations; and the average French person, for example, drinks 152 times more wine per annum than the average Englishman. Even in point of beer, the average Belgian, for instance, drinks twice as much as the average Englishman; while the average Dane drinks close on five times more spirits than the average Briton. "Yet all these facts will convert no one. For, since the Puritan wants Puritanism and not facts, he can be impressed only by inducing him to adopt another sort of Puritanism, but never by facts. "Accordingly, they have introduced Christian Science, or one of the oldest Orphic fallacies, which the Mediæval Germans used to call 'to pray oneself sound.' They have likewise inaugurated anti-vivisectionism, vegetarianism, anti-tobacconism, Sabbatarianism, and a social class system generally, which combines all the features of all the kinds of Puritanism.