It may have seemed natural enough to the Greeks, to us it is unnatural.

Even the best Athenians condemned it; Socrates took pride in never having yielded to it; all moderns denounce it disdainfully.

You must see that the whole progress of the world, the current of educated opinion, is against you, that you are now a 'sport,' a peculiarity, an abnormality, a man with six fingers: not a 'sport' that is, full of promise for the future, but a 'sport' of the dim backward and abysm of time, an arrested development." "You are bitter, Frank, almost rude." "Forgive me, Oscar, forgive me, please; it is because I want you at long last to open your eyes, and see things as they are." "But I thought you were with us, Frank, I thought at least you condemned the punishment, did not believe in the barbarous penalties." "I disbelieve in all punishment," I said; "it is by love and not by hate that men must be redeemed.

I believe, too, that the time is already come when the better law might be put in force, and above all, I condemn punishment which strikes a man, an artist like you, who has done beautiful and charming things as if he had done nothing.

At least the good you have accomplished should be set against the evil.