Hitherto even the philosophers had been wrong in their estimate of man and the world on which he lives. The ill-natured cynics represented that, in his earthly aspect, man is a parasite on the great animal the world; preying on his fellow-creatures, he is, in return, preyed upon by parasites. There are those that prey upon his body, others that, in the form of pains, ride upon the back of his vicious pleasures. There are those that fawn upon him, and feed upon his fortunes, and when he dies he is eaten by parasites. But there was in reserve, and unknown to these detractors, a chapter on human nature only laid open to our time and country, for though the Easterns had their fable of the gouls, it was received only as a fairy tale by the Westerns, till they were surprised into a belief even transcending the images of Arabian fancy. Yet the more hopeful philosophers, who draw their inspirations from Calvary, where was seen the consideration for the shekels of silver, are not dismayed. Yea, in this lowly thing we call our body, which preys on garbage, and is preyed upon in return, is a microcosm, which represents, in extension, that which has no limit--in perfection, that which is without end--in beauty, that which the poet cannot, with all his inspiration, describe. We would not be true to human nature if we limited the effects of this change in the fortunes of Log's house to what we have already described. The vicious heart pants for pleasures to worry it. _La lampe inextinguible du plaisir_ must burn, though fed with rancid oil extracted from decayed organisms; and so there was a growing increase, not only in the number, but in the intensity of the "enjoyments" of the bacchanalian nights. If the neighbours had noticed the external changes, they were not the less observant--though destined to be long ignorant of the cause--of what was nightly acted within. The brawls and fights were louder and more frequent, and the dithyrambics which mixed with them in grotesque inconsistency had more of the _ménad_ of the priests of Cybele. Yet all this, by God's law, was sternly a necessity: we need no moral here. Secrecy and publicity are separate instruments of divine retribution, working strangely and mysteriously to the same end. Even the ordinary secret sin corrodes the heart by its immurement, and the sin of Log's house was not an ordinary one. The more it is suppressed, the greater the elasticity of the torment. When freed from the prison of the heart it produces that recoil of the good which isolates the criminal from the smiles of fellowship and the help of society. Yes, this is the point with the diverging paths of ruin or redemption, and Heaven still vindicates the old economy. If the sinner will be saved by penitence, he must give signs of his suffering, and the world will profit by it as well as himself. If he hurries to ruin, he will still give evidence of his agony. In either case, that Providence which