PREFACE. 
XXV 
But, then, of course, the question arises “ what is por-
nography ? ” 
It has been justly remarked that the greatest men are 
those who play upon the whole scale of human emotions, 
from the spiritual to the obscene.  The humour of Aristo-
phanes, Shakespere, Sterne, and Rabelais is identical with 
that of the ordinary smoking-room story ;  only a deal better 
done.  Nor is there any other eternal humour ;  other kinds 
depend on the accidents of the age. 
You never find a single impure line in any of these au-
thors, any gloating on impurity.  The laughter is hearty, 
there is no schoolboy sniggering — no consciousness of 
guilt. 
(So even with Keats’ Gadfly and Sharing Eve’s Apple ; 
Browning’s bawdy jests in Pippa Passes, the Ring and the 
Book, One Word More, La Saisiaz and elsewhere ;  cleaner, 
truly, than the furtive eroticism in Prometheus Unbound. 
Shelley was more consciously under the curse of Jesus.) 
It is this consciousness of sin which is to my mind the essen-
tially Christian attitude.  It is this which inspires the out-
cry against art and simple pleasures ;  these swine nose eve-
rywhere for filth, and grunt with shocked glee when they 
find it. 
All serious subject are tabooed as “ bad form ! ” (I 
must add in parenthesis that the eugenic prigs and sex-
problem pigs are every whit as bad.  They are just as shoc-
ked at Rabelais as the other Puritans). 
There is nothing impure in passion, if only it be ele-