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'aliène 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 nuite. 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.