upheaval of the whole nature in the commission of a murder or the betrayal of a friend. But no ordinary, healthy man is ever convicted of Sin before the act, or in the act; the degenerate whose normal state is one of conscious sinfulness, feels for the moment deified upon the sudden access of energy that leads him into crime; and the outcast, when he learns to say, "Evil, be thou my good," stumbles, although unconsciously, upon the tremendous knowledge that the categoric imperative is the discharge of the material forces of Matter, whether the discharge be by the lightnings of the clouds, in the seismal throes of earth, or through the passion and imagination of men and women. Sin, then, is the exhaustion of the material forces of man. Discharges of force in ways of pleasure, in moods of delight, in trances of ecstasy, as well as discharges of force in feelings of rancour, jealousy, and malice, in deeds of lust, slaughter, and treachery, have alike to bear the unhallowed name of the succeeding reaction. It is a species of vengeance, this transference of the title Sin from the impotence of the spent Matter to the energy that was expended. The degenerate suffers because his forefathers used up the energies of the stock in enjoyment; the debauchee suffers by the over-discharge of his own force; and both feel a vengeful pleasure in transferring the moral nickname of their enfeebled condition to the innocent, whole-hearted liberty and power of the days of exuberant health. It is the meanest, most cowardly thing man has done to call his courage Sin: by this vengeance the enfeebled Matter of man obtains such pitiful satisfaction as an infant does when it calls the floor upon which it has broken its brow "bad," and invites its nurse to whip the offender. An apologue:--A bee, seized with an access of Quixotic daring, exhausted its sting in the neck of a quite harmless tourist, and shortly lay buzzing its last and lamenting its guilt. "What a sinner I have been!" the bee buzzed. A hornet flounced up and asked the bee what ailed it. "I have sinned," the bee replied, "and deserve only death and hell." "Let's see," cried the hornet, examining the bee; "why, you've no sting! You've used up your sting!" "Ay!" sighed the bee; "I've used it up, sinner that I am!" "Pooh!" replied the hornet, who was by way of being a casuist: "that's not how to look at it! Your sting, look you--your sting itself was the sin. Now, you are purged of that. _Courage, mon camarade, le diable est mort!_" "Whatever do you mean?" rejoined the bee. "When I was active and happy, confident and proud, with the power of life and death in my tail, going about the delightful business of the universe among the amorous flowers----" "Then you were sinful," interrupted the hornet, determined that his cousin should not die unconsoled: "now, since by the loss of your sting, which was your sin _par excellence_, you being sexless, you are