"I cannot tell you what my own views regarding this matter are; the subject will be discussed by the council and its argument presented in due time by its representative in the legislature, but I can tell you some of the things that occur to me in favor of this measure and against it:
"In the first place, it is clear that whatever may be the merits of the Demetrian cult it is bound sometimes to occasion misfortune; misfortune is seldom distinguished from injustice, and so the cult is made to bear the brunt of every disappointment that results from the working of the system, whether it proceeds from unwisdom, caprice, or accident. Now against caprice and accident the cult is powerless; but as regards unwisdom, whether it be in the council or in those to whom the council tenders the mission, the cult is responsible, and must be held responsible. Whether the misfortune in this case results from unwisdom or not is a question which I do not care to discuss; but obviously something has occurred that can be used to discredit our cult, and it is the part of wisdom to diminish the evil resulting therefrom to the utmost possible.
"In the second place, there has been recourse to violence, and violence is the greatest crime against social welfare which any man can commit. Are the persons guilty of this crime to be left uncorrected and free to frame new plots of violence against the state?
"In the third place, a trial of all the persons involved in this matter is going to give rise to a great public scandal. The trial is essentially of a political character, and no political trial can be conducted impartially; the very fact that political prejudice enters into it necessarily impairs the impartiality of the court; and even if a fair court could be secured, the defeated political faction would surely accuse the court of unfairness.
"All these things make the decision of this question complicated and difficult."
"But," asked I, "does not the very fact that your cult raises these difficulties put into question the wisdom of the cult itself?"
"Do you mean to say that in your opinion the mission of Demeter, with the beauty of its sacrifice and the blessing it must eventually bring upon the race, should be abandoned because in a single instance it has crossed the passion of a Chairo?"
"In the first place," asked I, "is it sure to bring a sensible benefit to the race? And in the second, is the sacrifice a beautiful one? Is it not rather inhuman and repulsive?"
"I shall answer your questions in the order you put them: Plato was the first philosopher on record who proposed applying to the breeding of men the same art as we apply to the breeding of animals—and he did not seriously propose it; his proposition was spurned, as you know, by all so-called practical statesmen up to the day of Latona, not because the evil attending the existing system was not recognized, but because the remedy proposed seemed worse than the evil. And, indeed, if men and women were to be obliged to mate or refrain from mating at the bidding of the state, one may well ask whether life would not become intolerable to the point of universal suicide. The evil, therefore, remained unabated. Consumption, scrofula, cancer, and other unnamable diseases became rooted in the race on the one hand, and no attempt was made to compensate the evil by selecting according to art. Not only so, but the pauper proved the most prolific, the cultured the least prolific; so that the breeding of man—far more important to human happiness than the breeding of sheep—seemed contrived so as to occasion the minimum of good and the maximum of evil. There seemed to be only two ways to mitigate this curse: one, to restore marriage to the sanctity it theoretically had under the canons of the church; the other, to appeal to the self-sacrifice of a few gifted women. As to the first, Latona believed marriage to be degraded in great part through the inability of young men and women to choose their mates with wisdom, and she instituted therefore the system of provisional marriage, tolerable only in youth, and though possible in later years, tolerated then only under extraordinary circumstances. As to the second, Latona instituted the mission of Demeter.