The Star in the West

THE HARLOT 119 burning the royal palace of Persepolis , and after his death married Ptolemy , King of Egypt ; and was it not at the feet of Lais that such men as Demosthenes and Diogenes were to be found ? Was it not also Catullus who sang to the fickle Lesbia : Give me kisses thousand fold , Add to them a hundred more ; Other thousands still be told , Other hundreds o'er and o'er . And Propertius to the wayward Cynthia : Cynthia's unsnaring eyes my bondage tied : Ah wretch ! no loves , till then , had touched my breast , Love bent to earth these looks of steadfast pride , And on my neck his foot triumphant press'd . So it is to - day . Conventionalism is passing along its way chaotic and disordered . Mutinus is worshipped at every street corner , and the goat of Mendes slavers over the revellers as they wend their way home with their Gitons and Messalinas . “ The decay of a people , as well as a family , begins with the preponderance of selfishness , so says Max Nordau ; and similarly Paul Carus writes , “ We know of no decline of any nation on earth , unless it was preceded by an intellectual and moral rottenness , which took the shape of some negative creed or scepticism , teaching the maxim that man lives for the pleasure of living , and that the purpose of our life is merely to enjoy ourselves ." ? Even as early as the middle of the seventeenth century , Adrian Beverland in his Justinianæi de stolatae Virginitatis [ sic ] noticed this social collapse : “ dum puellas nostrates adeo 1 i Conventional Lies . Max Nordau . ? Fundamental Problems , p . vii .