"
Mr. Heard thought of those tremendous mists he had seen only an hour
ago--the daughters of old Ocean.
"They humanize it," he echoed. "The mythopoetic faculty!"
"Perhaps this capacity of Southern scenery to bear a mortal
interpretation accounts for the anthropomorphic deities of classical
days. I often think it does. Even we moderns are unaccountably moved by
its varying facets which act sometimes as an aphrodisiac, and sometimes
by their very perfection, their discouraging spell, their insolent
beauty, suggest the hopelessness of all human endeavour. . . . Denis! I
should think him capable of anything, just now. Do you imagine a person
like this could possibly remain insensible to the beguiling influence
of these surroundings?"
"I never thought about him."
"Really? You interest me, Heard. If you deny the susceptibility of a
temperament like his, you deny the whole operation of externals upon
character and action. You deny, for example, the success of the Roman
Catholic Church which relies, for its moral effects, upon such optic
appeals to the senses, and upon the ease with which transitory feelings
can be transmuted into axioms of conduct.
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