gentleness, marks the conquest of life by love. All life's wildness and
savagery, which seem to give the lie to love continually, are after all
conquerable and may be tamed. And the lesson of it all is the great
persuasion that in the depth of things life is good and not evil. When
we come to the second conflict, and that love which has mastered life
now pits itself against death, it goes forward to the greater adventure
with a strange confidence. Who that has looked upon the face of one
dearly beloved who is dead, has not known the leap of the spirit, not so
much in rebellion as in demand? Love is so great a thing that it
obviously ought to have this power, and somehow we are all persuaded
that it has it--that death is but a puppet king, and love the master of
the universe after all. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is but a
faltering expression of this great assurance, yet it does express it.

For it explains to all who have ears to hear, what are the real enemies
of love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracian
women, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, stand
for the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. They
but repeat, in exaggerated and delirious form, the sad story of the
forfeiture of Eurydice. It is the touch of lawlessness, of haste, of
selfishness, that costs love its victory and finally slays it, so far as
love can be slain.

In this wonderful story we have a pure Greek creation in the form of one
of the finest sagas of the world. The battle between the pagan and ideal
aspects of life is seen in countless individual touches throughout the
story; but the whole tale is one continuous symbolic warning against
paganism, and a plea for idealism urged in the form of a mighty
contrast. Love is here seen in its most spiritual aspect. Paganism
enters with the touch of lawlessness. On the large scale the battle was