the element of gentle acquiescence. All looked so quiet, so
imperturbable; and yet all the time the little catfish of Christianity
(or the little leaven, if you will) was at its work, irritating,
disturbing, stimulating with salutary energy to upheaval, to rebellion,
to the soul's activity that saves from bland and reasonable despair.
Like a fisherman over-anxious for the peace of the cod in his tank, the
philosophic Emperor tried to stamp the catfish down, and hoped to
preserve a philosophic quietude by the martyrdom of Christians in those
flourishing municipalities on the Rhone. Of course he failed, as even
the most humane and philosophic persecutors usually fail, but had he
succeeded, would not the soul of Europe have degenerated into a
flabbiness, lethargy, and desperate peace?

Take history where you will, when a new driving force enters the world,
it is a nuisance, a disturbing upheaval, a troubling agitation, a
plaguey fish. Think how the tiresome Reformation disturbed the artists
of Italy and Renaissance scholars; or how Cromwell disgusted the
half-way moderates, how the Revolution jogged the sentimental theorists
of France, how Kant shattered the Supreme Being of the Deists, and Byron
set the conventions of art and life tottering aghast. Take it where you
will, the approach of the soul's catfish is watched with apprehension
and violent dislike, all the more because it saves from torpor. It saves
from what Hamlet calls--

"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat--
Of habits devil."

In the Futurist exhibition held in Sackville Street in 1912, one of the
most notable pictures was called "Rebellion." The catalogue told us that
it represented "the collision of two forces, that of the revolutionary