ORIGINAL SIN 
417 
The dead dog floats with the stream; in puritan France 
the best women are harlots; in vicious England the best 
women are virgins. 
If only the Archbishop of Canterbury were to go naked 
in the streets and beg his bread! 
The new Christ, like the old, is the friend of publicans 
and sinners; because his nature is ascetic. 
o if every-man did No Matter What, provided that it is 
the one thing that he will not and cannot do. 
That settles it. 
We do progress; but how? Not by the tinkering of the 
meliorist; not by the crushing of initiative ; not by laws and 
regulations which hamstring the racehorse, and handcuff the 
boxer; but by the innovations of the eccentric, by the 
phantasies of the hashish-dreamer of philosophy, by the 
aspirations 
of the idealist to the impossible, by the 
imagination of the revolutionary, by the perilous adventure 
of the pioneer. Progress is by leaps and bounds , by breaking 
from custom, by working on untried experiments; in short, 
by the follies and crimes of men of genius, only recognizable 
as wisdom and virtue after they have been tortured to death, 
and their murderers reap gloatingly the harvest of the seeds 
they sowed at midnight. 
Damn it! All this is so trite that I am half ashamed to write 
it; and yet-everyone acquiesces with a smile, and goes off to 
vote another set of fetters for his feet! 
Sin? This is the sin of sins: Restriction . All boots from the 
one last ; all beautifully polished on parade; the March of 
Time will find not much but hobbling! 
More of this when I answer your letter (just in as I drew 
rein to read this over) about Education . 
Love is the law, love under will. 
Fraternally, 
666 
P.S. On reading this, I note that I passed over with deserved