In all these strange and troubled waters of the human spirit one might wish for something of the serene and simple attitude of the ancient world. Laurent Tailhade has an admirable passage in his _Platres et Marbres_, which is well worth reproducing in this connection: “Toutefois, les Hellènes, dans, leurs cités de lumière, de douceur et d’harmonie, avaient une indulgence qu’on peut nommer scientifique pour les troubles amoureux de l’esprit. S’ils ne regardaient pas l’aliéné comme en proie a la visitation d’un dieu (idée orientale et fataliste), du moins ils savaient que l’amour est une sorte d’envoûtement, une folie où se manifeste l’animosité des puissances cosmiques. Plus tard, le christianisme enveloppa les âmes de ténèbres. Ce fut la grande nuit. L’Église condamna tout ce qui lui parût neuf ou menaçant pour les dogmes implaçable qui reduisaient le monde en esclavage.” Among Sacher-Masoch’s works, _Venus in Furs_ is one of the most typical and outstanding. In spite of melodramatic elements and other literary faults, it is unquestionably a sincere work, written without any idea of titillating morbid fancies. One feels that in the hero many subjective elements have been incorporated, which are a disadvantage to the work from the point of view of literature, but on the other hand raise the book beyond the sphere of art, pure and simple, and make it one of those appalling human documents which belong, part to science and part to psychology. It is the confession of a deeply unhappy man who could not master his personal tragedy of existence, and so sought to unburden his soul in writing down the things he felt and experienced. The reader who will approach the book from this angle and who will honestly put aside moral prejudices and prepossessions will come away from the perusal of this book with a deeper understanding of this poor miserable soul of ours and a light will be cast into dark places that lie latent in all of us.